Some Snickers and One Flinch
Okay, I know I’m being bad. But some nonsense is just so nonsensical it just cries out for it. ‘And if the children cry out for rebuke shall we walk on the other side?’ I bet you don’t know what part of the Bible that’s from. Neither do I.
Anyway. They’re schlepping around with their tongues hanging out, begging us to laugh at them. So let’s laugh at them. First let’s laugh at Jesus-sniffing.
You can find candles with just about every fragrance imaginable, from blueberry to ocean mist to hot apple pie. Now there’s a candle that lets you experience the scent of Jesus, and they’ve been selling out by the case…”You can’t see him and you can’t touch him,” says Bob Tosterud. “This is a situation where you may be able to sense him by smelling. And it provides a really new dimension to one’s experience with Jesus.”
Next let’s laugh at the hilarious idea of a Catholic cardinal worried that people will believe lies and fables and things that aren’t true not nohow.
Mr Arcolao confirmed that the cardinal told an Italian newspaper: “It astonishes and worries me that so many people believe these lies.”
The archbishop told Il Giornale: “The book is everywhere. There is a very real risk that many people who read it will believe that the fables it contains are true.”
The book is everywhere! The president of the US has a group to study it every day in the White House! The Gideons give it away free in motels so that everyone will have one! Oh, wait, that’s a different book with fables in it. Still, it’s good that the cardinal is so vigilant, isn’t it.
And then there’s all the risible (and rather disgusting) drivel from the French Jesus-sniffers. (What price laïcité eh.)
The display was ruled “a gratuitous and aggressive act of intrusion on people’s innermost beliefs”, by a judge…Italy’s advertising watchdog said the ad’s use of Christian symbols including a dove and a chalice recalled the foundations of the faith and would offend the sensitivity of part of the population…”When you trivialise the founding acts of a religion, when you touch on sacred things, you create an unbearable moral violence which is a danger to our children,” said lawyer Thierry Massis.
So they can’t even tease doves and chalices? The Church has a monopoly even on them? So…if I say rude unkind things to the pigeons in Trafalgar Square next time I’m mincing and plodding around central London, and some little tiny Catholic children on their way to the National Gallery under the protection of their teacher overhear me – what will happen to me? Will I be extradited to France for punishment? Yet another thing to worry about.
And finally there’s an item that isn’t actually funny, but quite…blood-chilling. Eugene Volokh, whom I never read but whom I’m always seeing linked to and quoted as a rare example of the reasonable, rational conservative. Saying some very strange things.
I particularly like the involvement of the victims’ relatives in the killing of the monster; I think that if he’d killed one of my relatives, I would have wanted to play a role in killing him. Also, though for many instances I would prefer less painful forms of execution, I am especially pleased that the killing — and, yes, I am happy to call it a killing, a perfectly proper term for a perfectly proper act — was a slow throttling, and was preceded by a flogging…I am being perfectly serious, by the way. I like civilization, but some forms of savagery deserve to be met not just with cold, bloodless justice but with the deliberate infliction of pain, with cruel vengeance rather than with supposed humaneness or squeamishness. I think it slights the burning injustice of the murders, and the pain of the families, to react in any other way.
That ‘but’ after ‘I like civilization’ is interesting. Sometimes a ‘but’ can say such a lot.
Volokh’s pro-torture post is truly sad stuff. I’ve always been a bit mystified by Volokh’s stratospheric reputation. Usually he writes unexceptionable, mildly interesting libertarian legal stuff, but nothing that really bowls me over. His current reputation may be merely the afterglow of his wunderkind background (teen computer whiz, clerk for US Supreme Court).
The candle-smelling-like-Jesus story makes me wonder if the cardinal could get some converted cannibals to take communion to see if the wafer tastes like human flesh, thus verifying transubstantiation.
Taking into account that Jesus was a working-class male living in a rather hot climate, I must say I have other ideas of what he would have smelt like. Hmmmm… I’m smelling an excellent commercial idea here…
As for Volokh: purely emotionally, I have some understanding for what the relatives of the victims did in that case. If the guy in question is guilty (there’s the first if), he’s pretty much a monster. But the same legal system that allows for this to happen have also allowed for the atrocities which B&W have pointed out in the past.
Haven’t read his post in defense of torture yet.
M.
OB – here’s an offer you can’t refuse. If you’d invest in my regular intake of spicy Levantine food for the coming few weeks, you get half the profits of my “socks that smell like Jesus. Nail from the Cross included”. I’m sure this will bankroll your website for a long time to come.
BTW: reasonable, rational conservatives aren’t that rare to my experience outside of FreeRepublic or FrontPagemag. Andrew Sullivan, Cathy Young…
M.
Oh, he was a wunderkind, was he – I didn’t know that.
I’d love to invest in your intake of cumin-laced falafel, Merlijn, but I’m afraid I don’t have the wherewithal. I’d have to get an honest job that actually paid money to be able to invest – and that seems terribly risky.
Reasonable rational conservatives – no doubt – I just had that impression about Volokh because people say that a lot. Talk about how much more reasonable he is than the rest of the people on his blog, etc. But as I say, I never read him, so I don’t know.
“if the cardinal could get some converted cannibals to take communion to see if the wafer tastes like human flesh”
But the cannibal would have to chew, or at least suck, and isn’t that some kind of heresy?
I wouldn’t know how to get the wafer down without chewing, at least a little, to be honest. I’d have a distinct feeling it’d stick in my throat and cause a premature reunion with the previous owner.
It may also depend on the policies of the church in question – the old-fashioned ones will want you to kneel, stick out your tongue, etc. while the more modern ones simply hand it to you for you to eat at your leisure.
Now putting peanut butter on your wafer, or keeping it with you all day to show around to everyone (like my brother did when he was small) – that’s heresy.
M.
Oh, come on, OB! You know they’re not concerned about the pigeons in Trafalgar Square (are they? Now you’ve got me worried!) It’s the context that gives them iconic status, and that offends some people. That said, I agree with you (I think) in not supporting the absolute right of everyone, everywhere not to be offended.
Strange it would be the French. They’re the ones who came up with the joke with the punch-line “C’etait le foutu pigeon, Joseph!”. (Sorry, you purists, I can’t remeber how to get accents on this keyboard).
“You know they’re not concerned about the pigeons in Trafalgar Square”
No, really?! I’m gobsmacked.
“Now putting peanut butter on your wafer, or keeping it with you all day to show around to everyone (like my brother did when he was small) – that’s heresy.”
Blasphemy, possibly. I think you’d have to assert a theological justification for that to achieve heresy.
“rare[???] example of the reasonable rational conservative”
Sigh. OB weren’t you just the other day giving the smack down to Terry Eagleton, Stanley Fish, and the leftists who are supporting the religious hatred law in England? Are they conservative? May I invite you to look at the Power Line, Beldar, Steven Den Beste (who is no longer blogging but whose archives are still up), Erin O’Connor, Wretchard, Posner-Becker, just to mention a few reasonable conservatives on the right side of the blogosphere who come to mind right off. You may find that the reasonable conservatives are not so rare after all., and that in some cases you and they are not all that far apart.
PowerLine? Reasonable and rational? This is – lest we forget – the blog which entered into abusive and personal attacks on PZ Myers at Pharyngula because he had the nerve to mock Hindrocket (of PowerLine) for saying “I think that Darwin’s theory of macroevolution is plainly wrong, on strictly scientific grounds… Darwinism is the official religion of the biological (and more generally, the scientific) establishment.”
Sorry, Allan, but rolling creationists out as examples of reasonable, rational conservatives just don’t cut the mustard…
Not agreeing with the Darwnian approach to macroevolution equates to creationism? I thought many reputable scientists have doubts about whether Darwin ‘s approach to evolution was correct. They are evolutionists but don’t find Darwinian evolutioni adequate to explaiin what’s been found. By no means can they be lumped together with creationists.
I didn’t see the post on Myers, but what does Hindrocket’s beliefs about Darwinian evolution have to do with the reasonableness of his political views? He’s a poliitical commentator not a scientific commentator. If you don’t want to agree with his views on evolution, fine. But that ‘s not what the blog is about.
Eagleton and Fish on the other hand, have their own eccentric beliefs that are far more relevant to the political agendas they push than Hindrocket’s beliefs about the Darwinian version of evolution are to the the matters discussed in his blog.
Anyway Hindrocket isn’t giving me a commission for pushing anyone his way. If you don’t think Hindrocket is the least bit reasonable because of one post that he wrote, ok, that’s your prerogative. But the right side of the blogosphere has no shortage of reasonable voices.
Allan,
“Sigh. OB weren’t you just the other day giving the smack down to Terry Eagleton, Stanley Fish, and the leftists who are supporting the religious hatred law in England? Are they conservative?”
Yes, I was. B&W is hardly bashful when it comes to criticising fellow leftists, after all. So what? You surely don’t think it therefore follows that I can’t also criticise conservatives?
“I thought many reputable scientists have doubts about whether Darwin ‘s approach to evolution was correct.”
Really? You thought wrong then.
“But the right side of the blogosphere has no shortage of reasonable voices.”
But I’m not claiming it does! I already said – by talking heads I meant tv pundits and major media pundits. (And by the way I do read Erin O’Connor, and also Posner though not his blog.)
“‘I thought many reputable scientists have doubts about whether Darwin ‘s approach to evolution was correct.”‘
Really? You thought wrong then.”
Well live and learn. Sigh (once again) People like Niles Eldredge, Michael Denton, Christain Schwabe and Brian Goodwin, just to mention a few non-orthodox Darwinian evolutionists, sounded reputable to me. What was I wrong on — that they were reputable or that they were non-orthodox Darwinians? Whichever it is, you can understand why I would be reluctant to blame Hindrocket for making what might be that very same mistake, if it was a mistake.
I’m glad you are willing to criticize leftists. Many of them certainly deserve it and don’t get enough of it from the left side of the blogosphere.
Your comment about the rare reasonable voice was made in connection with Volokh as a libertarian blogger, so I assumed you were referring to the blogosphere.
Oh ah – I thought you were citing one of the Florida comments.
I don’t think Niles Eldredge thinks ‘Darwin’s approach to evolution’ was incorrect (though I’m also not sure what you mean by that). Certainly his collaborator Steve Gould always emphasized that his ideas about punk eek and the like were far from being anti-Darwin in any sense that creationists would find useful.
Eldredge would be appalled to be thought opposed to Darwin at any level whatsoever, and Gould is already spinning in his grave. Creationists could only find the theory of punctuated equilibria useful if they ignored absolutely everything about it. (Its starting point, for instance, is the fossil record…)
Even assuming the validity of what you are saying about Eldredge {maybe I confused his views with those of someone else} , the thrust of my comment was that one can question orthodox Darwinism and not be a creationist, as exemplified by the fact that many reputable scientists have done just that and are firmly in the evolutionist camp. So if that’s all that Hindrocket did, we can’t assume he doesn’t believe in evolution, even assuming that has some relevance it might have to the political nature of his blog.