Um. News of the er.... something, or: I'm still snarky.

[featherynscale]

Jesus may have walked on ice, or: how we have no effing public dialogue at all about the you know, vague possibility that religion is, you know, myth rather than historical fact. The weather part of this is actually sort of nifty, but the reporting on it is rather crap.

Also, special bonus funtime poll: At the moment I happened to click on it, the poll attached to this story indicated that 35% of its respondents believed that every word of the Bible was literally true. Now, I understand that this sort of poll is much like a livejournal poll, which is to say, designed for the amusement of some of its readers rather than with the intention of producing any useful information, but still. That tells me that 35% of the people who bothered to click in either a)haven't read the Bible and are just bullshitting, or b)are simultaneously not very good at maths and also crap at critical reading.

Favorite line in the article: "Tabgha is the town where many archeological findings related to Jesus have been found." Why, oh why, am I not in the journalism business? Even setting aside the fact that well, as far as I know anyway, there aren't any archeological findings related to Jesus that haven't been later determined to be frauds, um, well, it's thing with the findings being found.

The foundation of my personal irrational faith is that once upon a time, in a time now lost to history, there were copyeditors. I can't prove this, but hey. As the curator of Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Archaeology, Israel Museum says in another story in the news today (which gives the implication that authentic finds from Jesus' life are being shown in museums while burying the little note that none of the items shown have any relation to Jesus way down in the last paragraph of the story), "But there is still a lot of archaeology going on, and new discoveries are being made all the time".

Comments

[lilia-blackbear.livejournal.com]

"But there is still a lot of archaeology going on, and new discoveries are being made all the time".

Thank the gods... it's just so boring when those archaeologists make old discoveries.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I think technically, all their discoveries are old discoveries. If they make new discoveries, they have to fill in the trench and start over somewhere else.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Arggh! I don't beleive the Bible is literally true, I do have room in my worldview for the miracles having occured however and I'm a hell of a lot more prone to accepting Jesus walked on the water than "there happened to be a stray iceberg that formed just at the right time to make his life easier", quite frankly.

Either its myth, or its true, but don't try and prove it with cod science. They'll be saying he had an early version of the Star Trek replicators to do that whole loaves and fishes business yet!

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I think niveus_tigris, below, has some 'cod science' to share... or, cod food science, anyway.

I much agree with you though. I think the most disturbing thing here is that we can't look at religion and say, "Oh, what a lovely myth! How useful and beautiful that is!". We have to try and pretend it's science and go about proving it, which I think is offensive to both believers and non-believers. If I'm a non-believer, you're trying to force a history on me that I don't buy into. If I'm a believer, you're killing my faith. Not cool on either count.

[zylch.livejournal.com]

At least they didn't "stumble onto" any finds. It's sad when precious pieces of history are crushed by clumsy archaeologists.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I hate it when that happens. The other thing is that when they go around finding their findings, it's hard to keep them from leaving their leavings.

Paleolimnology?

[niveus-tigris.livejournal.com]

As taken from www.cbfishwildlife.org/glossary/index.php

The study of the physical properties of freshwater lakes in prehistoric times, specifically Upper Arrow Lake geochemistry (nitrogen, carbon and phosphorus) conditions, algae evolution and fossil zooplankton.

Jesus could have walked on a massive swarm of zooplankton that were attracted to his feet by the divine energy radiating from them. This could have essentially solidified enough of the lake surface to allow a single average human to 'walk on water'.

Now you make one up and we'll see which one sounds more unlikely!

Re: Paleolimnology?

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

That's a much better story. Jesus = prototype Aquaman. Except, you know, with better costuming.

re: alternate theories

[matchgirl42.livejournal.com]

Who's to say that aliens didn't use a tractor beam on him, trying to beam him up for study, but the beam was only powerful enough that he was able to walk across the surface of the water?

Re: alternate theories

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I like it! See, what they don't tell you is that Jesus was very dense...

[fionnabhar.livejournal.com]

No, no, no. The punchline is "He knew where the rocks were."

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

That is my favorite Jesus joke ever.

[matchgirl42.livejournal.com]

*dies*

Best. Jesus. Joke. Evah.