Archive Category: Religion
Al Farrow's Guns & Ammo Reliquaries
Trigger Finger of Santa Guerra
When I die and become Saint Neatorama, I’d like sculptor Al Farrow to make me a reliquary to treasure one of my body parts. Presumably my blogging pinkie. Al has made some 40 unusual reliquaries, mausoleums and monuments out of guns and ammo parts, dedicated to preserving the body parts of fictional saints.
Link – as suggested by Minnesotastan in this Neatorama post by John Farrier (yes, I do read the comments 
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Vatican: Aliens May Be Free From Original Sin
Earlier this year the Vatican issued a statement acknowledging that Darwin’s theory of evolution was compatible with Christian theology. Now the Vatican’s chief astronomer has postulated that extraterrestrial life is possible.
Writing in the Vatican newspaper, the astronomer, Father Gabriel Funes, said intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space. Father Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory near Rome, is a respected scientist who collaborates with universities around the world. The search for forms of extraterrestrial life, he says, does not contradict belief in God.
Just as there are multiple forms of life on earth, so there could exist intelligent beings in outer space created by God. And some aliens could even be free from original sin, he speculates.
Link. The photo does not depict an alien free from original sin – just a random chestbusting alien.
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Suing Satan in Federal Court
In 1971, Gerald Mayo sued Satan in U.S. District Court, alleging that the Dark One had interfered in his life, causing him harm. Judge Weber dismissed the case, arguing that Mayo had failed to serve process of the suit to Satan, and that the court lacked jurisdiction over the defendant. Kevin Underhill’s legal humor blog has a copy of the decision:
Civil rights action against Satan and his servants who allegedly placed deliberate obstacles in plaintiff’s path and caused his downfall, wherein plaintiff prayed for leave to proceed in forma pauperis. The District Court, Weber, J., held that plaintiff would not be granted leave to proceed in forma pauperis who in view of questions of personal jurisdiction over defendant, propriety of class action, and plaintiff’s failure to include instructions for directions as to service of process.
Prayer denied.
The case was later used as a precedent during a case against God.
Link via Grow A Brain | Photo: flickr user Forever Wiser
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The 10 Commandments in Star Trek
For a science fiction series, Star Trek had a lot of references to religion. Gene Roddenberry once said he rejected all religions, yet one or another of the Ten Commandments showed up in quite a few episodes. Beliefnet takes a look at some of those episodes.
In “The Apple” from the original “Star Trek” series, Captain James Kirk and his crew encounter an idyllic world whose ageless inhabitants feed a computer named Vaal.
It seems like a dandy setup to Mr. Spock, but Dr. McCoy argues that it can’t be healthy to have all your needs met by a “hunk of tin” (perhaps shortly after polishing off a meal created by the Enterprise’s replicator). Eventually, the Enterprise is forced to zap Vaal with its phasers, sending the binary being to an ignoble, smoky end.
The natives are seriously bummed, but Kirk cheers them up by telling them they can now work and struggle and get sick and die just like everyone else. Yay!
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India Not Giving Up Mother Teresa
When Mother Teresa died in 1997, she was buried at the Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Calcutta. Now that she is expected to be canonized as a saint, the government of Albania has asked that her remains be disinterred and turned over to Albanian authorities. India has formally rejected the demand.
“Mother Teresa was an Indian citizen and she is resting in her own country, her own land,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said.
A spokeswoman for the nun’s Missionaries of Charity described the Albanian request as “absurd”.
Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, was born in Skopje, now part of Macedonia.
Correspondents say that the row over her resting place could develop into an ugly three-way squabble between India, where she worked most of her life, Albania where her parents came from and Macedonia where she lived the first 18 years of her life.
Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha said his country will continue the quest to regain Mother Teresa’s remains before the 100th anniversary of her birth next year. Link -via Arbroath
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Can a Godless Society be a "Good" Society?
Is
the belief in (or fear of, depending on your point of view) God necessary
to have a "good" society? What would a nation of atheists look
like? Would a godless country lead to lawlessness and immorality?
We actually don't have to wonder - there is a place where the great majority of people are not only not religious - they're can't even be bothered about the questions of faith, God, and life's meaning.
Sociologist Phil Zuckerman spent a year in Denmark and Sweden, the least
religious countries in the world and perhaps even in history, and interviewed
people about their religious beliefs (technically, the absence of such
beliefs). He published his findings last year (Oct 2008) in his book Society
without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment
TYWKIWDBI has some thought-provoking excerpts from the book:
Here's the premise of [Zuckerman's] book:
“First of all, I argue that society without God is not only possible, but can be quite civil and pleasant. This admittedly polemical aspect of my book is aimed primarily at countering the claims of certain outspoken, conservative Christians who regularly argue that a society without God would be hell on earth: rampant with immorality, full of evil, and teeming with depravity. Well, it isn’t. Denmark and Sweden are remarkably strong, safe, healthy, moral, and prosperous societies…”
He's careful not to extol the absence of religious belief as preferable for a society, while arguing strongly that when religious belief (or dogma) is absent, society can crank along just fine. Herewith some excerpts and some of my notes from the book -
p. 6 - “…their overall rates of violent crime – such as murder, aggravated assault, and rape – are among the lowest on earth. Yet the majority of Danes and Swedes do not believe that God is “up there,” keeping diligent tabs on their behavior… In fact, most Danes and Swedes don’t even believe in the very notion of “sin.” Almost nobody in Denmark and Sweden believes that the Bible is divine in origin. And the rate of weekly church attendance in these Nordic nations is the lowest on earth…” [...]
p. 10 – "When they say they are “Christian” they are just referring to a cultural heritage and history. When asked what it means to be Christian, they said 'being kind to others, taking care of the poor and sick, and being a good and moral person.' They almost never mentioned God, Jesus, or the Bible in their explanation of Christian identity. When I specifically asked these Nordic Christians if they believed that Jesus was the Son of God or the Messiah, they nearly always said no – usually without hesitation. Did they believe that Jesus was born of a virgin or that he rose from the grave? Such queries were usually met with genuine laughter – as through the mere asking was rather silly.”
I haven't read it, but will definitely put this fascinating book on the short list of must-reads this year: Link
Here's a fascinating interview with Phil Zuckerman about, amongs other things, the difference of being a religious Christian in America and a cultural Christian in Denmark and the rise of Islam because of the immigration from Africa:
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10 Doomsday Cults
Many religious cults are based on apocalypticism, the belief that the world is going to end. Check out ten such beliefs, their founders, and followers. One such cult is the Panacea Society.
In 1792, part-time fortune teller Joanna Southcott started collecting “divine revelations” and had them sealed in a box with strict instructions to open it only for Jesus. Her followers called themselves Southcottians and were mostly early-19th century Spiritualists. Southcott dramatically announced that she was pregnant with the messiah, Shiloh, whose birth would kill all but her followers. However, Southcott was a 64-year-old virgin who showed no signs of pregnancy. To Southcott’s credit, she began doubting her beliefs when she failed to give birth but died before she was able to do anything about it. The sudden power vacuum among the Southcottians brought out all sorts of leadership, all of whom claimed they could psychically communicate with Southcott’s box, and transformed the Southcottians into a bizarre cult that refused to bury Southcott’s corpse, believing that she would be resurrected. They renamed themselves the Panacea Society under the belief that they had healing powers, and still believe that Shiloh will descend from heaven to reboot the world at a later date.
There are nine other cults profiled at Ty.rannosaur.us. Link
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Italian Scientist Reproduces Shroud of Turin
It has been one of the 20th century’s most intriguing artifacts, a shroud measuring 14 feet, 4 inches by 3 feet, 7 inches, with what appears to be an imprint of Jesus Christ. The so called Shroud of Turin shows an image of the front and back of a man with long hair, with arms crossed in front, and what appears to be blood from wounds in the side, hands, and feet.
In 1988, carbon dating tests showed the shroud to date between 1260 and 1390 AD, proving a setback for the believers in its authenticity. Now, according to an Italian scientist, he was able to reproduce the image, undoubtedly proving that the Shroud of Turin was a clever reproduction.
“We have shown that is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics as the Shroud,” Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to illustrate the results at a conference on the para-normal this weekend in northern Italy, said on Monday.
A professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, Garlaschelli made available to Reuters the paper he will deliver and the accompanying comparative photographs.
Garlaschelli reproduced the full-sized shroud using materials and techniques that were available in the middle ages.
They placed a linen sheet flat over a volunteer and then rubbed it with a pigment containing traces of acid. A mask was used for the face.
The pigment was then artificially aged by heating the cloth in an oven and washing it, a process which removed it from the surface but left a fuzzy, half-tone image similar to that on the Shroud. He believes the pigment on the original Shroud faded naturally over the centuries.
They then added blood stains, burn holes, scorches and water stains to achieve the final effect.
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Video Game Questions Your Ethical Standards While Deleting Files from Your Computer
(Video Link)
Zach Gage says that he created the free video game Lose/Lose to make people question their ethical assumptions. The game is similar to Space Invaders, but every time you kill an alien, the game deletes a randomly-selected file from your hard drive:
Lose/Lose is a video-game with real life consequences. Each alien in the game is created based on a random file on the players computer. If the player kills the alien, the file it is based on is deleted. If the players ship is destroyed, the application itself is deleted. Although touching aliens will cause the player to lose the game, and killing aliens awards points, the aliens will never actually fire at the player. This calls into question the player’s mission, which is never explicitly stated, only hinted at through classic game mechanics. Is the player supposed to be an aggressor? Or merely an observer, traversing through a dangerous land? Why do we assume that because we are given a weapon an awarded for using it, that doing so is right?
Clicking on the link below will not download the game onto your computer and begin deleting your files. But it will give you the option to do so.
Link via Geekologie
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Bizarro - At the Atheist Cafe
This Bizarro comic panel made me chuckle. I’m sure you can start a flamewar simply by mentioning the A-word (indeed, Dan Piraro’s blog post on this comic panel has quite a bit of comments), so why don’t we just laugh a bit and carry on?
Link – For more Bizarro, check out Dan Piraro’s excellent website and blog.
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Mini T. Rex Could Be Missing Link
A private owner has donated a fossil that could change the way we think about Tyrannosaurus and their development.
Some scientists believed the T.Rex evolved to its enormous size, then its arms shrank, when they were no longer needed. The new discovery, though, shows that the tiny-armed killing machine may have evolved from a much smaller killing-machine-with-tiny-arms. This totally rearranges the previous T.Rex evolution paradigm.
The 125 million-year-old fossil dinosaur, unearthed in China and dubbed Raptorex kriegsteini, is “as close to the proverbial missing link on a lineage as we might ever get for tyrannosaurs,” Sereno said.
(As a special bonus, check out the religious debate in the comments.)
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Buddha Shaped Pears
You’ve seen square watermelon and even heart shaped cucumbers, but Buddha pears? They are made with a cool plastic mold that is attached while they are still little. I’d love to say more about them, but I don’t speak Spanish Portuguese, so I can’t read the original site. Any of you Neatorama readers care to help translate?
Link Via BoingBoing
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Star Wars Religious Art
Image: Worth 1000 user Sylver
Charlie Jane Anders of the science fiction blog io9 has assembled a gallery of some of the best photoshop pieces that blend Star Wars and Western religious art. Among Anders’ sources are the photoshop contests of Worth 1000 and Something Awful. The image above is derivative of Leonardo da Vinci’s Litta Madonna.
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Tezcatlipoca
(YouTube Link)
Tezcatlipoca is a three-minute animated short film by Robin George that uses music from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake to tell the story of the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca:
Like other Aztec deities, he could be both helpful and destructive. As a god of the sun, he ripened the crops but could also send a burning drought that killed the plants. The patron god of helpless folk such as orphans and slaves, he was also the patron of royalty, and he gloried in war and human sacrifice. Another of Tezcatlipoca’s roles was to punish sinners and cheats, but he himself could not be trusted.
Although associated with the sun, Tezcatlipoca was even more strongly linked with night and its dark mysteries, including dreams, sorcery, witches, and demons. Legend said that he roamed the earth each night in the form of a skeleton whose ribs opened like doors. If a person met Tezcatlipoca and was bold enough to reach through those doors and seize his heart, the god would promise riches and power in order to be released. He would not keep his promises, though….
As a trickster god, Tezcatlipoca delighted in overturning the order of things, causing conflict and confusion. Sometimes, these disruptions could also be a source of creative energy and positive change. Tezcatlipoca’s ultimate trick was one he played on his fellow god Quetzalcoatl. After introducing Quetzalcoatl to drunkenness and other vices, he used his mirror to show Quetzalcoatl how weak and degraded he had become. Quetzalcoatl fled the world in shame, leaving it to Tezcatlipoca. He did, however, promise to return at the end of a 52-year cycle.
The YouTube video isn’t bad, but for a full-screen, high-resolution version, click on the link.
Link via The Presurfer
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Weird Religious Festival: Cracking Coconuts on One's Head
Some religious rituals are so bizarre that they leave you scratching your head. This one, however, may lead to a cracked skull. Literally. Here’s the strange practice of cracking a coconut on devotees of Goddess Lakshmi – and it may just be the fault of the British imperialism:
Many of the visitors believe that it was the British presence in India in the 19th Century that spawned the idea for the festival.
A former village council president tells the story.
P. Mani, Former Council President, Mettu Mahadanapuram Village: "When the British were trying to draw a railway line against the wishes of the villagers here, they found big stones just like coconuts, beneath the ground. They sarcastically told villagers that if they could break these stones with their heads, they would change the course of the railway line. The villagers broke the stones and the line was shifted."
Some of the locals say since then the ritual has been performed at the temple using coconuts, and that these rituals draw thousands.
Link [Flash video]
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Converting a Church (Yes, With Its Own Cemetery) Into a Home
Sure it’s got high ceilings and amazing stain glass windows but wouldn’t you feel a little bit intimidated taking showers and sleeping in this house? After all, it used to be the House of God …
Apparently, it didn’t bother Sally Onions and Ian Bottomley – the couple converted a Georgian church in Kyloe, Northumberland, England (complete with its own cemetery outside) into a residential house.
All About You has a gallery of photos of the converted house (from the House Beautiful magazine): Link (if you don’t like clicking through the photos, SwipeLife has kindly um, "borrowed" all the photos)
Previously on Neatorama: Man Converts Church Into a Home
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Salvation Mountain
After several failed attempts to spread the Word of God through various grand schemes, Leonard Knight finally settled on building Salvation Mountain in the middle of the desert from discarded trash, sand and adobe. He painted it with inspirational quotes from the bible to help protect it from the weather.
Leonard decided to leave California but wanted to spend one extra week in the area to make a small memorial with a half bag of concrete he had lying around. Weeks begat months begat years and after tons of junk, sand, concrete and paint were assembled, Leonard had the 50-foot high creation he was after! Until it collapsed on itself.
Undaunted, Leonard rebuilt the mountain, this time using native adobe clay and straw. He applied paint liberally to keep the elements from washing away his work. Over the years, Leonard has applied well over 100,000 gallons of paint to his mountain of clay and debris as (he hopes) a lasting tribute to God.
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Codex Sinaiticus: World's Oldest Bible Now Online
The British Library has just put Codex Sinaiticus online. The world’s oldest bible, handwritten over 1,600 years ago, is now available for the general public to peruse. Just don’t expect to find the familiar biblical stories you learned at Sunday school:
Discovered in a monastery in the Sinai desert in Egypt more than 160 years ago, the handwritten Codex Sinaiticus includes two books that are not part of the official New Testament and at least seven books that are not in the Old Testament.
The New Testament books are in a different order, and include numerous handwritten corrections — some made as much as 800 years after the texts were written, according to scholars who worked on the project of putting the Bible online. The changes range from the alteration of a single letter to the insertion of whole sentences.
And some familiar — very important — passages are missing, including verses dealing with the resurrection of Jesus, they said.
Richard Allen Greene of CNN has more: Link | Codex Sinaiticus [wikipedia]
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Church Blesses Men With Beer
Rather be flyflishing, golfing or sleeping than going to church? Concerned with the lack of men attending services, the Church of England is now offering new incentives: free beer, bacon rolls and chocolate bars!
Men at St Stephen’s church in Barbourne, Worcester, will be handed bottles of beer by children during the service. A prayer will be said for the fathers before the gifts are distributed.
The Ven Roger Morris, archdeacon of Worcester, who will be leading the service at St Stephen’s today, said that it was a practical way of sending a message to fathers.
“I don’t see any other time that we can stop and remember fathers, and this is a gesture saying ‘Here’s something that will bless you,’” he said.
“Posies of flowers are given to mums on Mothering Sunday and we wanted to give a laddish, blokeish gift to the men. A bottle of beer hits the mark. The whole of life is to be celebrated in church.”
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4 Holy Women Transformed by Cheese
1. The Visionary: St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
And yet, as soon as he left, the nuns started leaning on poor Margaret Mary. Like self-flagellation and celibacy, they believed eating cheese was a way of mortifying the flesh - giving up earthly pleasures to be closer to God. Margaret Mary struggled for days to overcome her fear. She wept; she writhed; she wished for death. Then, at last, she decided she had to "conquer or die." So, Margaret Mary prayed for strength and ate some cheese. Unfortunately, her experience with the dairy was as horrendous as she'd feared. Margaret Mary later recalled, "I have never felt such repugnance to anything." Still, for eight years after that first trial, she ingested cheese every single day as an ascetic ritual. And as the years passed, her visions intensified. Today, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque is known for her vision of the Sacred Heart - the image of Christ's heart pierced, aflame, and crowned with thorns. Such momentous revelations don't come easy, and she couldn't have done it without the vile cheese. 2. The Intellectual: Sor Juana Inés De la Cruz
Unencumbered by butterfat and lactose, her intellect flourished. By the time she was 8 years old, Juana had taught herself to read Plato, Aristophanes, and Erasmus in Latin. At age 13, she was paraded around the Spanish courts as a child prodigy. She wrote volumes of prose and poetry, from religious verse to scientific treatises, and earned the moniker "The Tenth Muse." And though she had many suitors, Juana took the veil at age 18, giving up men in addition to her favorite food. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is revered today as a proto-feminist and the first female theologian of the Americas. Although she never regretted the sacrifices she made for her studies, a certain longing always remained in Sor Juana. As an old woman, she wrote, "I envoy those who say that the urge to study has cost them nothing," and perhaps heaving a sigh for the lost cheese of her youth, she added, "The desire to know has cost me dearly." 3. The Martyr: St. Perpetua
While she stewed in prison before her execution, she experienced a vision of a white-bearded shepherd who offered her some sheep's milk cheese. In the dream, Perpetua ate the cheese. Then, just as she heard the word "Amen," she awoke to the taste of overwhelming sweetness. The vision of heavenly curd reassured her of God's purpose and prepared Perpetua to die for her faith, which she soon did. Perpetua was publicly flogged, trounced by a cow, and then hacked to death in a botched decapitation. But the account of her vision - believed to be the first Christian text written by a woman - inspired millions and secured her legacy as one of the most influential martyrs in history. 4. The Gambler: Diana Duyser of Florida
Although initially frightened by the image, Duyser composed herself and stashed the holy leftover in a plastic box filled with cotton balls. Then she placed the box at her bedside table and left it there for a decade. According to Duyser, those 10 years were filled with good luck as she won regularly at local casinos. More impressively, her grilled sandwich didn't mold. In 2004, Duyser decided to share her miracle with the world and posted the sandwich on eBay. To the bewilderment of many, it sold for $28,000. The buyer, Golden Palace online casino, appreciated its pop-culture significance and showcased the grilled cheese until 2006. Today, the holy sandwich resides in a safe deposit box in Austin, Texas. Golden Palace proudly claims it still hasn't decayed. Although Duyser has been ridiculed for her devotion to a grilled cheese sandwich, her faith has never wavered. "I would like all people to know that I do believe that this is the Virgin Mary Mother of God," she insists. And while money and fame have faded with Duyser, she still carries with her a timeless memento of her little cheese miracle - a tattoo of the sandwich inscribed near her heart, paid for by GoldenPalace.com (Photo: AP via BBC News) |
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The article above, written by David Clark, is reprinted with permission from Scatterbrained section of the Mar/Apr 2009 issue of mental_floss magazine. Be sure to visit mental_floss' website and blog for more fun stuff!
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Margaret
Mary Alacoque grew up in a family of fervid cheese-haters, which wasn't
exactly unusual for the time. Cheese had a bad reputation in 17th-century
Europe. People all across the continent were horrified by its stench and
denounced it as indigestible. They blamed the fermented curd for everything
from sickness to moral corruption. So, when Margaret Mary's brother took
her to join a convent in Burgundy, France, in 1671, he secured one key
condition for her stay - that under no circumstances should she be compelled
to eat cheese.
Meanwhile,
across the ocean in the 1650s, a Mexican girl named Juana was struggling
with the opposite problem. Little Juana was an aspiring scholar and, like
most children, loved eating cheese. But when she heard it would make her
stupid - a superstition of the time - she was forced to choose between
her appetite and her intellect. Juana renounced the delicious dairy, proving
that her "desire to know was stronger than the desire to eat."
In
the the early 3rd century, Vivia Perpetua converted to Christianity, even
though the Roman emperor Severus had outlawed the fledgling religion.
Perpetua was arrested, and she faced a grim decision - either renounce
Christ or meet a gruesome death. Perpetua chose the latter. 
Even
in our jaded and secular age, cheese hasn't quite lost its religious relevance.
In 1994, a humble Floridian named Diana Duyser bit into her grilled cheese
sandwich and was shocked to see the face of the Virgin Mary staring back
at her. 
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Rainbow Frog is Worshipped as God
In India, a newly discovered color-changing frog has been worshipped as a god. Reji Kumar, the person who found it, keeps the frog in a glass jar at his home where hundreds of people come to see it every day.
Apart from the obvious biological findings this hopping lava lamp can provide, it also gives an additional insight as to how religions and spiritual groups can emerge. I don’t blame them either. Who needs color-saturating hallucinogens for spiritual transcendence when you have a kaleidoscopic animal?
I say this new rainbow frog will become the new symbol for racial equality, just as long as it doesn’t croak (which is actually a concern).
The frog was a dazzling white colour when Reji, who is from Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala, in south India, first spotted it.
Then it changed to yellow and had gone grey by the time he got it home.
“By night the frog was dark yellow, and then it became transparent so you could see its internal organs,” Reji, a life worker, reportedly said.
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Koogle: The Kosher Search Engine
Orthodox jews are restricted from surfing the web in case they run across religiously questionable and sexually explicit materials. But Koogle, a search engine launched by Yossi Altman, may change all that:
Yossi Altman said Koogle, a play on the names of a Jewish noodle pudding and the ubiquitous Google, appears to meet the standards of Orthodox rabbis, who restrict use of the Web to ensure followers avoid viewing sexually explicit material.
The site, at www.koogle.co.il, omits religiously objectionable material, such as most photographs of women which Orthodox rabbis view as immodest, Altman said.
Its links to Israeli news and shopping sites also filter out items most ultra-Orthodox Israelis are forbidden by rabbis to have in their homes, such a television sets.
"This is a kosher alternative for ultra-Orthodox Jews so that they may surf the Internet," Altman said by telephone.
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Raining Tadpoles in Japan: A Modern Biblical Plague in the Making?
Is it a prank or is it a modern-version of the Biblical Plagues? You decide:
About 70 more dead tadpoles have been found in Ishikawa Prefecture, local officials said Friday, as the mystery over how they came to be in areas with no paddy fields or other habitats continues.
The latest findings, Thursday afternoon, were in the cities of Nanao and Wajima. More than 100 dead tadpoles were found in Nanao and Hakusan last week and tiny dead fish were found Tuesday in the town of Nakanoto. [...]
Masafumi Matsui, a professor at Kyoto University’s graduate school of human and environmental studies who specializes in amphibians, said: "It is hard to comment without actually seeing these tadpoles . . . but considering the circumstances reported by the media, someone could be pulling a prank."
People have speculated the tadpoles might have fallen from the sky after being sucked up by waterspouts or carried by birds. But there have been no reports of strong winds, and ornithologists dispute the bird theory.
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The Jewish Origin of the Vulcan Salute
Here’s a trivia for all you Trekkers to talk about during the previews of the new Star Trek movie. Did you know that the Vulcan salute – you know, the "live long and prosper" hand signal invented by Leonard Nimoy:
Nimoy felt that there should be some kind of distinctive greeting among Vulcans, analogous to a handshake or a bow. Alan Dean Foster’s novelization, based on an early script, has Spock kneeling before the Vulcan matriarch, T’Pau, who places her hands on his shoulders, like royalty dubbing a knight. But Nimoy didn’t care for this. Previous episodes had already established that Vulcans are touch telepaths. Therefore, a touch on the shoulders would be an invasion of privacy. Instead, Nimoy drew upon his own Jewish background to suggest the now-familiar salute. Back in the 1960s, hippies who watched "Amok Time" thought the salute was a variation of the two-fingered peace sign. But we Jews knew better. The Vulcan salute came not from protest marches, but from the pulpit of Nimoy’s childhood synagogue.
The Vulcan greeting is based upon a blessing gesture used by the kohanim (koe-hah-NEEM) during the worship service. The kohanim are the genealogical descendants of the Jewish priests who served in the Jerusalem Temple. Modern Jews no longer have priests leading services as in ancient times, nor do we have animal sacrifices anymore. (Yes, people really do ask about that!) The sacrificial system ended with the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in the year 70. C.E. However, a remnant of the Temple service lives on in the "kohane blessing" ritual (duchenen in Yiddish) that is performed on certain holy days.
Link – via grow-a-brain
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God's Debt Cancellation Plan
Morris Cerullo in a poster advertising for his "Mission to London" (Photo: LoopZilla)
Loan modification and debt cancellation are hot businesses right now. So hot that God himself apparently decided to get in on the action.
Here’s a story of how one man built himself a surging evangelistic ministry, complete with "God’s debt cancellation" program – yours for the unbelievably low payment of a mere few hundred bucks:
Emotional on-air pitches generate much of the money used to pay network salaries. In March, Morris Cerullo appeared on Inspiration’s “camp meeting” with a message to fire up prospective donors.
“Is anybody ready for the greatest financial breakthrough you’ve ever experienced in your life?” he asked.
The elder Cerullo, a Pentecostal minister, at times appeared to speak in tongues. His gravelly voice periodically rising to a shout, he urged members of the audience to fill envelopes with $900 donations.
“When you sow for your financial anointing, the windows of heaven are going to open for you,” he said. “ … In the next nine months, you are going to experience more financial blessings than you’ve ever experienced in your life! 100 fold! Debt cancellation!”
Soon, these words appeared on the screen: “Call now with your $900 offering and receive God’s debt cancellation.”
Ames Alexander and Tim Funk of Charlotte Observer have the investigative report: Link – via Raw Story
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A Heavenly Message in Fried Salami
Nancy Simoes of Southwest Miami-Dade County, Florida, was in the kitchen cooking her family’s favorite dish of fried salami when she got a heavenly message:
"I had only three pieces in my skillet, and then as I was flipping it. The first letter was a G, a perfect G; and then I got the O, and I thought to myself, how cool will it be if the third letter was a D," said Simoes.
That third letter was a D, and everyone was in shock in her house.
Link – spotted by Neatoramanaut Gauldar over at the Forum
Previously on Neatorama: August: A Busy Month for Religious Sightings!
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Living Rock: Massive Monuments Sculpted In Situ
We all know about Mount Rushmore and the Great Sphinx of Giza, both carved in situ without the intention of ever being moved. Such sculptures are often referred to as living rock. Others, like these, are not so well known. From places you may expect to find them, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia to the far flung reaches of Ethiopia and Bangladesh, most were carved in ancient times. In almost all cases there are no extant records which explain how they were built without the aid of modern technology. Yet here they are.
Quazen blog has a list of 9 incredible architectures sculpted out of rocks:
China has many a Buddha dotted throughout its extraordinary landscapes but the Giant Buddha of Leshan is unique in that it was carved directly out of the cliff face – just look at the people at the feet of the statue. The sculpture, which is seventy one meters (or over three hundred feet) tall dwarfs the tourists that flock to see it. It is positioned so that it faces Mount Emei and stands at the meeting place of three rivers. Although the Government of China has promised a restoration program, the statue has suffered from the effects of pollution, particularly over the last twenty years. Fortunately, the statue was not damaged in the Sichuan earthquake of 2008.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
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Churchgoers Are More Likely to Support Torture
The Pew Research Center conducts a lot of surveys – but this one yielded a very surprising result: churchgoers, especially Evangelicals, are more likely to support torture than those unaffiliated with any religious organization.
The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.
(Photo: sduffy [Flickr])
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Saudi Arabia: Cheeky License Plates Banned, Child Marriages Still OK
To protect public propriety, Saudi Arabia has recently banned license plates whose Arabic characters spell out lewd words:
Saudi plates normally have three Arabic characters and three numbers, but the growing fashion is for auto owners also to display a version using the Latin alphabet and some buyers of personalised "vanity plates" deliberately choose Arabic letters which turn into words like "SEX", "ASS" and "NUT".
The authorities in charge of issuing vanity plates have released a list of nine prohibited three-letter combinations, and ordered all branches to stop renewing plates that include them, according to Watan.
Link (Photo from The Geekiest License Plates at Geek24 – lots of fun stuff there!)
In other news, a Saudi judge reiterated his decision that the marriage of an 8-year-old to a 47-year-old man is valid and refused to annul the marriage:
The issue of child marriage has been a hot-button topic in the deeply conservative kingdom recently. While rights groups have been petitioning the government to enact laws that would protect children from this type of marriage, the kingdom’s top cleric has said that it’s OK for girls as young as 10 to wed.
"It is incorrect to say that it’s not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger," Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, the kingdom’s grand mufti, said in remarks last January quoted in the regional Al-Hayat newspaper. "A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she’s too young are wrong and they are being unfair to her."
Al-Sheikh reportedly made the remarks when he was asked during a lecture about parents forcing their underage daughters to marry.
"We hear a lot in the media about the marriage of underage girls," he said, according to the newspaper. "We should know that Sharia law has not brought injustice to women."
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Japan's Marathon Monk
A 44-year-old Japanese monk named Genshin Fujinami has just completed what probably is the most grueling race in history: a 7-year 24,800 mile (~40,000 km) journey – an equivalent of a trip around the world!
Since 1885, only 46 other so-called “marathon monks” of the Tendai sect have survived the ritual, which dates to the 8th century and is believed to be a path to enlightenment, according to temple officials. The last monk to complete it returned in 1994.
A few have done it twice; many more have not lived to finish. Traditionally, any monk, or gyoja, who can’t continue to the end must take his own live, either by hanging or disembowelment.
A rigorous regimen dictates that in each of the journey’s first three years, the pilgrim must rise at midnight for 100 consecutive days to pray, run along an 18-mile trail around Mount Hiei — stopping 250 times to pray along the way. He can carry only candles, a prayer book and a sack of vegetarian food. [...]
His most difficult trial, however, comes during the fifth year when he must sit and chant mantras for nine days without food, water or sleep, in a trial called “doiri,” or “entering the temple.”
In the sixth year, he walks 37.5 miles every day for 100 days. And in the seventh, he goes 52.5 miles for 100 days and then 18 miles for another 100 days, before returning to the temple, located in Otsu city, about 234 miles southwest of Tokyo.
Link (Photo: Kyodo/AP) – via martialdevelopment
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