After 24 hours of surgery, a 2-year-old Indian girl is returning to her village without 4 of the 8 limbs she was born with. 24 hours in surgery! I think the surgeons were right to call her a hero.
It’s true that I have a somewhat unhealthy obsession with all types of deformations, mutations and modifications - cycling through even some recent posts will make that quite clear. But there was something in the article that caught my attention both for its absurdity and its typicality:
Lakshmi’s parents said they were taking her back to their rural village in eastern Bihar state where she had been revered by some as an incarnation of the four-armed Hindu goddess she was named after.
Was this, perhaps, an attempt to console the parents of the sadly disfigured offspring? I highly doubt it. What’s more, I wouldn’t be surprised if the parents of the child faced some backlash from the community for destroying an image of their god. It makes me think of the numerous and equally absurd stories along the lines of “Texas woman bites into cupcake and discovers image of baby Jesus!”
Far worse, though, is the line from this article about the event:
Children born with deformities in deeply traditional rural parts of India…are often viewed as reincarnated gods. But some had sought to make money from Lakshmi. Her parents kept her in hiding after a circus apparently tried to buy the girl.
Fucking monsters! Who could attend a circus featuring such an unfortunate creature and contain their rage?
I’m glad the kid is alright.
Update: Flying Spaghetti Monster appears in Thanksgiving pie!
‘Man, you used to be cool…’
Some 40 Japanese Buddhist monks on Saturday paraded their devotion on a Tokyo catwalk in an attempt to seduce hipster youth into believing that Buddhism is, after all, ultra cool and modern. Fashion show!
The fashion show opened with a Buddhist prayer set to a hip-hop beat at the centuries-old Tsukiji Honganji temple, where nearly 40 monks and nuns from eight major Buddhist sects showed off elaborate robes in an effort to win back believers…
“We wanted to show the young people that Buddhism is cool, and temples are not a place just for funerals,”
said one monk who went on to explain that his robe had a special pocket where he kept his traditional begging bowl or, “you know - my iPod.”
Is this just one more nail in the already crumbling coffin? The robes are beautiful, though. Check them out here.
Really funny, tongue-in-cheek site God is Imaginary lists 50 ‘proofs’ to comedically establish God’s non-existence. I haven’t read the whole site (and won’t - I have other things to do…), but proof #39, “Realize that Jesus was a Jerk,” made me laugh out loud repeatedly. It’s not that the writing is terribly funny in itself, but the hilarious absurdity of straightfacedly calling Jesus a ‘jerk’ over and over again made me break down.Here is a gem from the proof, which accuses Jesus of being both a jerk and an idiot (harsh!):
Have you noticed that in many cases Jesus is childish and emotional, rather than thoughtful? People who act like this are jerks. Here’s an example from Matthew 18:7-9:
“Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come! If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.
This statement is totally ridiculous on several different levels. First, something like a hand cannot “cause you to sin” — your brain causes “sin.” Every intelligent person knows that. Therefore, gouging your eye out or cutting your hand off is useless. If you have a problem with “sin” and you are going to amputate something to solve it, you would need to amputate your brain, since that is where all “sin” originates.But if you think about it further, you realize that Jesus has completely missed the actual remedy. If you are having a problem with unproductive behaviors, what you need to do is either educate or rehabilitate yourself. You would do that by talking with a counselor or seeing a therapist. Amputation is an absurd prescription, as every intelligent person knows. Jesus is not only a jerk — he is an idiot. He dispenses advice that is completely useless, and recklessly dangerous as well.
There are a number of other great jabs at the Son of Man in the piece. I recommend wasting a few minutes to read it and browse through the other proofs. As Mark Twain quipped, “Against the assult of laughter nothing can stand.”
tags technorati : Jesus, funny, anti-Christian
For most people, I think, the claim that morality is essentially a matter of taste requires that a somewhat complex set of near metaphysical distinctions be imposed before assent can be given. For instance, and at the very least, one must distinguish between universal taboos (prohibitions against murder and rape, both of which follow from the assertion of life’s essential worth and integrity, are quick examples), and values of lesser severity (values which may safely be left to individual discretion). Nevertheless, it is difficult for me to imagine that any unbending moral worldview could benefit scientific advancement in a meaningful way.
In the West we take many things for granted, even those of us who are thoroughly cleansed of illusions of personal saviors and the like. Christianity was so deeply integrated into the thinking of our past’s greatest minds that even pure ontology could not escape its influence. But the East has been guided by an altogether different set of principles and perceptions. This article gives us a clear example of that alternative evolution, as well as its consequences for an area of research currently viewed with suspicion and even loathing in many parts of the West.
“Most people in Hindu and Buddhist countries,” Silver says [Lee Silver is a molecular biologist at Princeton and author of the book, “Challenging Nature,” an analysis of the often incompatible intersect between science and spirituality], “have a root tradition in which there is no single creator god. Instead, there may be no gods or many gods, and there is no master plan for the universe. Instead, spirits are eternal, and individual virtue - karma - determines what happens to your spirit in your next life. With some exceptions, this view generally allows the acceptance of both embryo research to support life and genetically modified crops.”
By contrast, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, God is the master creator who gives souls to humans and gives them dominion over soulless plants and animals. While not all traditionalists consider an embryo to be a human being with a soul, those who do say it is wrong for scientists to create or destroy embryos in the course of research.
I will not claim that I have kept abreast of the significant philosophical issues surrounding the ethical status of human embryo research, but it is absolutely clear in my mind that such research will continue to go forward irrespective of Christian or otherwise opposition to its development.
The immensity and sheer confusion of much of India does not often produce a feeling of calmness in the heart of the foreigner, despite the philosophical history of the country. One at times even imagines that such a philosophy was itself born of a desire to escape the crush of India (such a theory would, of course, be comically anachronistic). But it is fitting that the cremation monument devoted to one of the country’s most famous men is located in such a tranquil oasis, and indeed seems an oasis unto itself.
Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948, by a Hindu extremist. He was cremated the next day in Delhi. The simple black marble monument
marking the place of his cremation does not fail to produce a sense of gravity in the viewer, and this impression floods in quite independently of the opinions one may hold of the nearly mythical ‘Father of India.’ We spent a good portion of the day here, enjoying the scrupulously pruned flowers and the atmosphere surrounding the shrine of the famous Indian statesman, and the experience is one that will not be easily erased.
India is haunted by many powerful ghosts. Some of them wield an influence over the country unmatched by any living Indian today.
tags technorati : India, Gandhi, Deli, impressions, travel
