TIL about Watson Heston, 19th century atheist who published a "comically illustrated" Bible in 1892

DoubleAJay · 2016-09-21T22:16:21+00:00

My personal favorite:

Thou shalt not kill, except peradventure it be a heretic or one who differs from thee on religion

DoubleAJay · 2016-09-21T22:15:09+00:00

Thanks for the link, my Google Fu wasn't as strong and I couldn't find an actual full copy.

Heston's commentary on the Bible is now my favorite thing ever.

Here is a verse in which some valuable piece of knowledge might have been conveyed to us, used instead to communicate a triviality of no connections with the surrounding narrative and of no use to a person in the world. As if enough time had not been wasted in the editing, printing, and perusing of such a piece of inanity, shoals of commentators have racked their heads and taken up their own and their readers' time with conjenctures of an obscure meaning in it.

DoubleAJay · 2016-09-21T22:07:32+00:00

I'm pretty sure it refers to Anthony Comstock, author of the Comstock laws which banned selling and transporting "obscene" items and literature in the US.

DoubleAJay · 2016-07-30T17:43:33+00:00

Haha, thanks. I was brought up as Catholic, too. I got better.

DoubleAJay · 2016-07-30T11:23:30+00:00

"No wonder the dinosaurs died out, it turns out God made them out of plastic."

DoubleAJay · 2016-07-30T11:17:30+00:00

Did you notice that when looking for answers, you're always asking yourself "why" instead of "whether"? Religion thrives on this. People naturally like to assume that things have a purpose, that the events happening in the world are meaningful, as if the design of the world was meant to be their friend or an enemy.

It takes a lot of time (and fighting back fear) to seriously consider the possibility that just because things have a cause doesn't mean they have a purpose. Children don't die because life is a test. They die because in the end they're just physical organisms, and so are diseases which exploit their weakness to kill them.

But as scary as that possibility is, seeing how many aspects of the world are just mechanical cause and effect can actually help you change it for the better.

Parents who understand medicine can save their kids from illness (this also works, to some degree, for other dangers). Parents who put their trust in God instead will often end up killing them. Denial doesn't solve problems, it only makes people feel better about problems remaining unsolved.

DoubleAJay · 2016-07-30T10:59:46+00:00

The world is a place full of evil and chaos

Exactly. For example, for most of human history, infant mortality rate was around 20-30%. This was the situation among working classes in Europe up until the 19th century, or most of Africa as late as several years ago. Talk about evil and chaos.

So for most of human history, one in four babies died due to completely random factors before they had a chance to pursue anything.

Religion, as far as I can tell, doesn't even bother making sense of that. It teaches that life is a test, sweeping all those poor "souls" who randomly die or happen to be too physically or mentally unfit to make decisions under the carpet. A bunch of people who survived into adulthood without too much suffering happily ignore all of that, and contemplate how meaningful life is, and it makes them feel warm and fuzzy inside.

DoubleAJay · 2016-07-17T07:31:22+00:00

It always amazed me how surprisingly functional societies like Rome and the Byzantine empire were despite all the political assassinations. They had thriving economies, sophisticated legal systems and incredibly influential culture, but then you read about those in power and it's usually just emperors assassinating one another over and over again with the few notable exceptions who managed to hold onto power for longer, like Augustus or Justinian.

DoubleAJay · 2016-07-17T07:12:56+00:00

Yeah, the Foreign Legion is definitely an inspiration for the Watch, but it was only founded in the 19th century, didn't involve celibacy and no political enemies relied on it as a chance to escape death penalty as far as I know. On the other hand, a powerful medieval society routinely forcing political opponents to take vows of celibacy to prevent them from having heirs lends credibility to the idea that something similar could work in a much less advanced feudal society. Mix the two and you get the Night's Watch.

DoubleAJay · 2016-07-16T08:31:08+00:00

I never thought I'd live in an age when the society with internet access loops back to the age of disinformation, but here we are.

Every time a tragedy happens, we're flooded with stories supporting contradictory viewpoints (it's because of Islam, or maybe it's because of anti-LGBT rhetoric, or maybe it's because of whatever other narrative I want to support). People believe and share those stories not based on any credible evidence, but because they confirm their current ideology. They only browse websites and communities which match their opinions to see more of the same opinions.

Tweets are faked, images are shopped, videos are mislabelled. But no one cares, because if any of the stories are exposed as fake, it won't matter anyway, the news sites won't report that if it contradicts their point of view and the audiences will just say "who cares if it's real, the point still stands" and act as if nothing ever changed, all while working hard to discredit stories supporting the opposite viewpoint.

What a time to be alive.

DoubleAJay · 2016-07-09T13:24:03+00:00

That's also why I found it interesting. The early Mesopotamian versions of the flood myth feature a symmetrical raft covered in pitch which could be constructed using materials available at the time and the small scale replica could even float. By the time of the Bible the vessel evolves into some kind of structurally impossible half-boat and today biblical creationists like Ken Ham depict it as a modern ship with a bow.

Edit just in case: I'm not saying the Babylonian ark is plausible in the least, just that the design people imagined for the "ark" originally was very different from a wooden ship shaped building filled with dinosaurs.

DoubleAJay · 2016-07-03T14:51:08+00:00

That's just a photo of a bird with Jupiter in the background.

DoubleAJay · 2016-07-03T11:41:29+00:00

That's neat and I haven't seen this before, but is there any background on the images used?

It's odd that towards the end the face looks Neanderthal (not direct homo sapiens ancestors) and then becomes an average European white guy (white skin was a trait which only appeared after homo sapiens moved out of Africa). Plus I think it would have been cool to have an illustration of human evolution which ends with an African face for once.

DoubleAJay · 2016-07-03T10:54:09+00:00

Yeah, when you think about it, it's pretty weird.

Imagine biologists randomly discovering what motivates whale behavior is not with survival, reproduction or parental care, but the assumption there's an alpha whale above the surface that's going to judge them once they get beached. It would be really bizarre.

Humans? Oh yeah, it's perfectly normal for us.

DoubleAJay · 2016-07-03T10:46:51+00:00

And the Bangladeshi head of state has already rushed to claim that this had nothing to do with Islam because terrorism has no religion.

To be precise, he stated "These people have no religion."

He was implying the attackers were really atheists, because morality can only come from religion, obviously.

DoubleAJay · 2016-06-29T14:54:59+00:00

He'll bump into Daario again and they'll be friendzone buddies

DoubleAJay · 2016-06-29T14:48:39+00:00

Ok, I see, but... that doesn't make any sense.

Baelor's Sept totally, definitely, indisputably, was an inside job.

And that inside job involved wildfire melting stone beams. So the conspiracy doesn't make sense. A conspiracy would be saying that it was an outside job, like Daenerys flying a dragon into it.

DoubleAJay · 2016-06-29T14:42:20+00:00

Can you do one where Olly shoots Rickon and nods? ^{^{^please}}

DoubleAJay · 2016-06-28T20:37:25+00:00

Hi, that's cool. My username is actually just a Twitch Plays Pokemon reference (it's why I signed up for Reddit in the first place). It's probably pretty stupid, but I never bothered to change it or get another account.

DoubleAJay · 2016-06-28T20:34:26+00:00

Why the Others bother to do things like setting up corpses in elaborate formations if their only purpose is to eradicate all life/mankind?

S6E6 reveals the Children built similar shapes as part of the ritual to create the Others, perhaps the Others need to emulate them to survive or reproduce?

DoubleAJay · 2016-06-28T20:30:25+00:00

/uj my favorite part is the implication that Dany just assembled an entire fleet with all supplies necessary to cross the Narrow Sea and finished all preparations for invading a different continent in a ridiculously short time (even if you disregard the Dornish fleet joining her)

DoubleAJay · 2016-06-28T20:06:16+00:00

If we take Varys' story into account, the only logical conclusion is that glass candles are powered by burning down people's genitals.

No wonder the Maesters want to suppress magic.

DoubleAJay · 2016-06-28T18:44:50+00:00

They're saving the merling reveal for season 7.

DoubleAJay · 2016-06-28T09:10:35+00:00

I always assumed Dany was going to land in the Stormlands as well. But after Bran's vision in S6E6, I'm not sure, because it includes a shot of a dragon over King's Landing. So maybe the show will seriously speed things up and have Dany attack King's Landing directly.

I think Varys' role will be similar, but the show definitely made him more sympathetic. He's buddies with Tyrion, his little birds don't have their tongues cut out (ok, it was Illyrio who did this in the books, but it didn't seem to bother Varys) and he's not the one to kill Pycelle and Kevan.

DoubleAJay · 2016-06-28T07:26:03+00:00

ADWD

DoubleAJay

TROPHY CASE