Some of you may have already heard about Conservapedia’s ‘Conservative Bible Project‘ (CBP). American “Conservatives” (who, like conservatives in Australia, are often the most radical) have begun a wiki project to rewrite the Bible free from “liberal distortion”. Their problem with current translations is as follows.

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:

1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, “gender inclusive” language, and other feminist distortions; preserve many references to the unborn child (the NIV deletes these)
3. Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level
4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms to capture better the original intent; Defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words that have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle”.
5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as “gamble” rather than “cast lots”; using modern political terms, such as “register” rather than “enroll” for the census
6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
8. Exclude Later-Inserted Inauthentic Passages: excluding the interpolated passages that liberals commonly put their own spin on, such as the adulteress story
9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”

I won’t draw attention to such hilarities as their intention to “Express Free Market Parables” or “Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness”, but instead point out at least one inconsistency they already suffer. Their second guideline is for a bible that is “Not Emasculated”, but consider the parallel ‘translations’ of the creation of Adam in Gen. 2.7 from the KJV and the CBP:

KJV: And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

CBP: Then the LORD God formed a human being out of the dry powdered soil on the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And so man became a living person.

Emasculation!

They’re taking quite a while with their ‘translation’; I wonder how their pace stacks up against the LOLcat Bible.

There was an article in the Herald about typos on Google Maps, one of which rendered Oatley Park’s Jewfish Bay as “Few Fish Bay”.

I imagine it was just misreading on the part of the data enterer, but it reminded me of a friend’s complaint that she was unable to search for “Jew” on Google, but they were okay with returning results for “N-gger” (sensitivty hyphen not included; I just don’t particularly want my blog turning up when people search that). When we tried to replicate this we had no problem, as is the case today, but I wonder if there was some kind of weird squeamishness at one point.

Arjun Ramachandran ‘Australia … according to Google Maps‘, Sydney Morning Herald (4/11/09)

How long-distance baptism was performed in the Stone Age. Or, you know, 3rd century Rome. From the Catcomb of Callixtus.

A piece on msnbc.com about online commuting to church. Apparently they even perform baptisms over webcams. I love this quote from Kurt Ervin, who runs the website for Central Christian Church

We live in a day and age and a culture where people go to school online, bank online, date online and do other things online

I think the only logical progression from “date online” is, well, you know. And is it just me, or was there an awkward beat before he said “and do other things online”? Oh, it’s just me.

Anyway, I love how immorally moral one church is about their Google keywords.

LifeChurch.tv has even found a way to attract people surfing for experiences that are far from pious. The congregation buys Google ad words so that a person searching for “sex” or “naked ladies” sees an ad inviting them to a live worship service instead.

Money spent saving souls from internet porn is money well spent

Rachel Zoll ‘Web is popular place to “open” a church‘, msnbc.com (1/11/09)

And, yea, I shall delve into the archives for something to write about, for you may know me as a fisher of compliments, but I say unto you, I have become as a fisher of posts.

On the 19th of October the Atheist Foundation of Australia and the Global Atheist Convention websites suffered a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) when unknown persons flooded their servers with requests that overloaded them, shutting them down. They were down for at least 2 days (although it’s up again now, a month or so later), and in retaliation atheists created a Facebook group to organise a retaliatory DDoS for God – or at least Heaven’s prayer servers – on the 8th of November.

This is a call to all non-believers and advocates for freedom of speech to join us in a global co-ordinated minute of prayer with the aim of inundating God with so many useless prayers that it causes his divineness to go offline as as result of our own DDOS (‘Divine’ Denial of Service).

I find it fascinating that the atheists have chosen to conduct their entirely metaphysical protest according to the structure set out by something that can only be found online. This alone makes up for this Dawkins-acolyte atheistm being referred to as “Atheism 2.0″.

It’s not going to be prayer meetings and love-ins for all atheists, however. Atheist P. Z. Myers retorted:

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to join in, because whatever I have planned for that time, whatever it may be, will be far more interesting and productive than babbling to an invisible man.

Chris Duckett ‘Atheist sites suffer wrath of DDoS‘, ZDnet.com.au (21/10/09)
Bennett Gordon ‘Overloading God’s Servers‘, Utne Reader (27/10/09)

Photo courtesy of Atlas Obscura

Apologies to Msrs Diamond, Yauch and Horovitz.

David P often links on Facebook to places he’s discovered on Atlas Obscura, a site dedicated to weird and wonderful travel destinations around the world. One of these was the Museum of the Holy Souls in Purgatory, in Rome, which displays a number of bibles, prayerbooks and other items that have been seared with handprints apparently belonging to souls suffering in Purgatory.

Dissatisfied with the dearth of intercessory prayers from their loved ones, these souls burn their mark into items belonging to their friends and family as a reminder to remember their service to those lost. There’s something altogether creepy about this stuff, if only the placement of the thumb in the above image. That thumb isn’t opposed at all!

Of course, one can’t invoke Purgatorio without also invoking Dante. The prodigal David P has promised a post on Visceral Games’ latest marketing stunt for Dante’s Inferno, so lets hope he’s able to deliver.

Claire Soares ‘Souls Stuck in Purgatory Send Signals To Rome‘, Reuters (16/8/02)

'The Stoakes-Whibley Natural Index of Supernatural Collective Nouns', by David Malki of Wondermark

That’s right. The WORST kind.

David P posted this a few weeks ago on Facebook, and I’m only just now getting around to posting it. Retrosexual David Malki has composed a list of fictional collective nouns for supernatural entities, and some of them are religious. I’ll let you work out which ones. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

I have one bone to pick with Malki, however, about some of his collectives. “A chimney of djinns”? Really? When the English ‘genie’ is so commonly known, which comes from the Arabic plural djinni?

It’s not all bad, though. I’m a big fan of “A solace of Babas Yaga”. As far as I know there’s only ever been one Baba Yaga, despite what some authors may assume. I also dig the pluralisation of the title, as in ‘Attorneys-General’. And let’s not even raise the hilarity of “An itself of Yahwehs”.

This also gives me an excuse to link to the blog of a colleague of mine, Fall of Mythos, which concerns religion and popular culture. In this post she discusses the various summonable deities in the Nintendo DS game Scribblenauts, which I’ve been dabbling in on-and-off myself.

David Malki ‘Supernatural Collective Nouns‘, Wondermark (30/10/09)

The Institute of Jainology has launched their Jainpedia project: an online depository of digitised Jain texts from collections around the world. Helmed mainly by British Jains, the project aims to incorporate the numerous manuscripts held in British institutions, as well as those remaining in India.

Primarily targeted at academics, Jainpedia also hopes to make itself available to “millions”. In order to make texts in Sanskrit and Prakrit more accessible the texts will be ‘amplified’ with translations, commentary and audio-visual supplements. Ratilal Chandaria, Chairman of the Institute, explains

The resource will continue to develop by allowing users to blog their Jain experiences online and therefore weave their everyday practices into the richness of the UK Jain tapestry.

Jainpedia plans to launch to the public in late 2012 and I can only assume that all the talk of public availability means it will be free to access. Funding for the project included equal contributions from the Institute and the Heritage Lottery Grant.

Mansi Choksi ‘Religion reloaded‘, Times of India (25/10/09)

Now, I know I’m behind in my posting, but this is getting ridiculous. A lot of the feeds in my RSS reader have been spewing up old news and this is one of them (although I can’t work out which it was, as I’ve had the tab open for ages). Still, it’s interesting anyway.

Apparently this video made the top 3 topics on the front page of Digg, bringing it to the attention of its host YouTube for the first time. YouTube deemed this “inappropriate content” and it was removed. Predictably enough, this was deemed ‘censorship’ by many in the YouTube community, and it was rehosted multiple times.

I’m not sure exactly what YouTube deems “inappropriate” in this case. One or two of the images used in the slideshow are vaguely offensive, but it’s mostly pretty puerile stuff.

blargfrit ‘YouTube Pulls Atheist Video After Making Front Page of Digg.com‘, disinformation (6/1/09)

Rabbi Ben Greenberg has collected a number of readings from the Torah – re-tweeted by a selection of Jewish users – into a book available from internet self-publisher Lulu.

Not everyone is pleased with the marriage of religion and social media, however, and Corey Hodges warned against obscuring Christianity beneath layers of entertainment, in his blog for the Salt Lake Tribune. Describing an unnamed church in Houston that encourages parishioners to tweet comments and questions during the sermon that appear on screens behind the pastor who later addresses them. Surely a greater danger is someone deciding to write “this sermon is lame” for all to see.

Social media and religion are not irreconcilable, however, as devotees of this fine blog are no doubt aware. Writing for Arizona State University’s State Press Joseph Hermiz draws the same analogy as A. Prof. Mark Goodacre of Duke, that in the 1st century Paul himself utilised the most advanced social medium of the time, the epistle, to evangelise the Mediterranean.

More traditional folk are still serviced by the digital revolution, however. The 1985 Jewish Publication Society translation of the Tanakh has been made into an audio recording, replacing the previous standard audio of the JPS’ 1917 translation. The audio stretches over 60 hours and is published online in weekly podcasts.

Joseph Hermiz ‘“Tweeting” the Torah, bringing religion online‘, State Press (19/10/09)
Corey J. Hodges ‘Tweeting in the pews? Pray it ain’t so‘, Salt Lake Tribune (15/10/09)

Photo credit: Susan NYC

With apologies to Msrs Berry, Buck, Mills and Stipe.

The first story concerns the burgeoning scene of Muslim punk, which goes by the name of Taqwacore after the novel by Michael Muhammad Knight. I posted a story about this on my Facebook a few months ago (before I’d resumed blogging), but it’s doing the rounds again for some reason. Not directly relevant to our blog, but bear with me.

I was reminded again of this while reading this article on ‘New Jews’, or “Judaism 2.0″ (more on that last in a sec). This article describes the “New” Jews (primarily Gen X-ers in their 30′s) who are determined to wear their Judaism in a way that suits them. These might include devout punk, Lesbian Jewish weddings, hip magazines or micro-breweries (“HE’BREW”). Sarah Lefton founded G-dcast, a series of weekly, downloadable animated cartoons as a way of making learning about Judaism less stuffy. I’m not sure I’d call this new Judaism “Judaism 2.0″, not only because the whole “x 2.0″ thing is so horribly daggy, but also because that term would surely suit post-Temple, Rabbinic Judaism better.

Next up we have the recent tightening of restrictions on Sabbath use of lifts by observant Jews. As Jews are not allowed to work on the Sabbath, and rabbis decided that pressing a button constitutes work, lifts in buildings used by many Jews were altered to automatically stop on every floor on the Sabbath. A recent ruling by a group of prominent Israeli rabbis, however, could change that, leaving many elderly Jews in high apartment buildings up… -stairs without a lift. The sticking point has always been whether the lift uses a sensor to gauge how many people were inside it, thus turning the lift into one big button. I’m not exactly sure why it would need to do this: surely, if it’s stopping on every floor it doesn’t matter. It couldn’t stop altogether when it’s empty, because then you’d need to press a button to call it. Unless the area outside the lift on each floor had its OWN pressure pad… Rabbis, I don’t envy you.

Lastly, we return to the “.0″s with the recent self-description of many atheists, disenfranchised with the current pack of “New Atheists”, as “Atheism 3.0″. These atheists admit there may be a place for religious belief in the world, and refuse to see it as the single source of the world’s ills. This nomenclature works slightly better than “Judaism 2.0″, although I worry about the lack of any definition of what exactly constitued “Atheism 1.0″. Can’t people think of better names for things?!

Linkography:
Kate Shellnutt ‘Young Muslims use punk to loosen their religion‘, Chicago Sun-Times (20/9/09)
Jessica Ravitz ‘“New Jews” stake claim to faith, culture‘, CNN.com (30/10/09)
Paul Vitello ‘Another Landlord Worry: Is the Elevator Kosher?’, New York Times (9/10/09)
Daniel Burke ‘Atheism 3.0 Finds a Little More Room for Belief‘, beliefnet (//09)