It's round-up time again! Yeagh! Yeagh!

It’s been a long Hellatus (sorry, Supernatural fans), but I’ve been active on Twitter that whole time. Surprise

I’ve decided that a good way to keep content on the blog might be to round-up the week’s tweets in a blog post (which then gets re-tweeted. Ha-HA!). Here goes:

* Wikipedia Bans Church of Scientology | Wired.com

* Police tell cafe owner: Stop showing Bible DVDs, or we will have to arrest you | Daily Mail via @IanGBlack

* Google makes 5 Dead Sea Scrolls searchable | CNN Belief Blog

* Petition on White House website asks for investigation of Scientologists | Beliefnet News

* Torah Games? Bringing Torah to Life Through Game Design | State of Formation

* Thich Nhat Hanh is now a 3D Animated Comic Book | SF Gate via @walterm

* Woman read son’s religion paper minutes before slaying husband, tech expert testifies | NY Daily News

* British police give partial apology, say cafe owner can play Bible videos | Beliefnet News

* “Ha! Face of Jesus shows up on used Nintendo ES system. Kotaku has pics. Owner says: answer to ‘What Would Jesus Play?’” via @godwired

* “Bizarre video game based on a psychotic retelling of the near sacrifice of Isaac: ‘The Binding of Isaac’” via @godwired

I also realised I had some draft posts hanging around, including one I thought I’d lost. Stay tuned for more stuff soon!

REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih via Boing Boing

A list of Coptic Orthodox churches has been unearthed on a Muslim extremist website, including the Alexandrian church that was attacked on New Year’s Day. Some of the other churches on the list have stepped up security in preparation for the Feast of the Epiphany on the 6th. In Holland several nearby Muslim communities have pledged support and protection for the event, and hundreds (of presumably Muslim students, I couldn’t find any other versions of the story) gathered at al-Azhar University in Cairo to show solidarity.

Interestingly, the story about the list and European connections is only mentioned in the video on the CNN story linked below, while the text discusses the situation in Egypt.

Salma Abdelaziz ‘Egypt beefs up security for Coptic Christmas Eve‘, CNN (6/01/11)

(Thanks to DavidP for pointing me to that awesome photo.)

Google Earth was in the news regarding religion twice recently. The first story concerns the discovery via satellite photo that a prominent Star of David exists on Iran Air’s main building. My first thought was that it was just a geometric symbol, and also one that is prominent in Islam as its artistic tradition praised mathematical forms over anthropomorphic representations (although, admittedly, this was not so much the case in Persia). It would indeed appear, however, that the building was designed by Israeli architects during the Shah’s reign.
Nayef Zidani ‘Iran outraged as Star of David revealed on airport‘, Al Arabiya News Channel (29/11/10)

The second story tells how, in this age of mineral booms, thieves in the UK are using Google Earth to find churches that still have lead rooves they can fleece. Sneaky.
Reuters ‘Lead thieves use Google Earth to target UK churches‘, Faith World (2/12/10)

Here are a few views on what the WikiLeaks dump means for religions the world over. Obviously they focus on diplomatic relations, so we really only see Islam and Christianity represented here.

Muqtedar Khan ‘WikiLeaks exposes Muslim nations’ hypocrisy‘, Washington Post (28/11/10)

Reuters ‘Scathing U.S. view of French unrest and Muslim integration in WikiLeaks‘, Faith World (2/12/10)

Reuters ‘Russian Orthodox Church’s Kirill on ecumenism, via Wikileaks‘, Faith World (2/12/10)

Reuters ‘WikiLeaks: Talks with the Taliban a non-starter‘, Afghan Journal (5/12/10)

Tim Lister ‘Holy See urges “prudence” in reading Vatican-related cables‘, CNN (11/12/10)

Tim Lister ‘WikiLeaks: Sex abuse scandal left rift in Vatican-Ireland relations‘, CNN (11/12/10)

Reuters ‘WikiLeaks bares even tiny Vatican’s diplomatic soul‘, Faith World (11/12/10)

Martin Robbins ‘Mail’s Wikileaks ‘revelation’ about Muslim students is their own 2008 story‘, The Guardian (22/12/10)

Alan Berning

*deep breath* Okay, here’s the rest:

‘Muslims Target TV/Internet Evangelist for Death‘, ChristianNewsWire (14/10/10)

Reuters ‘Dead Sea scrolls going digital on Internet‘, FaithWorld (19/10/10)

Reuters ‘Bible.com investor sues company for lack of profit‘, FaithWorld (20/10/10)

Bob Allen ‘Sheriff’s office settles lawsuit with former church member outed for blog‘, Associated Baptist Press (21/10/10)

Heidi Campbell ‘New Publications in Religion and the Internet‘, When Religion Meets New Media (30/10/10)

Associated Press ‘Palestinian held for Facebook criticism of Islam‘ (11/11/10)

John Blake ‘Pastor: Facebook is encouraging adultery‘, CNN.com (18/11/10)
and
Mark Driscoll ‘Facebook doesn’t cause adultery; people do‘, Washington Post (19/10/10)

Reuters ‘Condoms, Pius XII, sex abuse and other main points in pope book‘, FaithWorld (20/10/10)
Pope admits the Vatican could have discovered that Bishop Williamson was a Holocaust denier by doing a simple search on the internet.

Lahav Harkov ‘IDF uses Facebook to catch 1,000 draft-dodging women‘, Jerusalem Post (23/11/10)
Israeli women who avoid military service due to being “religiously observant” are caught on Facebook eating in non-Kosher restaurants, dressing in “immodest” clothing and responding to invites from IDF agents to parties on the Sabbath. I call “Entrapment!” on that last one.

Helen Carter ‘Girl arrested for allegedly burning Qur’an‘, Guardian (25/11/10)
15 year-old English girl arrested “on suspicion of inciting religious hatred” after posting to Facebook a video of her burning an English translation of the Qur’an.

Thank God that’s over. This is as good an opportunity as any to announce the arrival of a new contributor to the site, Mediaevalia. Something from her soon!

Alan Berning

Trying to clear a bottleneck of stories I haven’t posted on. Mea maxima culpa.

Heidi Campbell ‘Can an online community be a church ? IRS says “No”!‘, When Religion Meets New Media (24/8/10)

Joshua M. Z. Stanton ‘Cyber Dialogue: The Future of Inter-Religious Engagement‘, Patheos (6/9/10)

Eli Yishai ‘Shas minister shuts down online payments on Shabbat, holidays‘, Haaretz.com (14/9/10)

Matthew Razak ‘Fallout Online viral advertising moves to religion‘, Destructoid (18/9/2010)

Reuters ‘Vatican Bank head in money laundering probe–sources‘, FaithWorld (21/9/10)
Vatican probably the only place in the world that allows people to use ATM’ s in Latin.

Mollie ‘Code name Esther‘, GetReligion (1/10/10)
The Biblical connection of the computer worm that got through Iran’s Digital Veil (that’s what we’re calling it, by the way).

Reuters ‘France charges man for burning, urinating on Koran‘, FaithWorld (5/10/10)

Randall Munroe ‘Online Communities 2‘, xkcd (5/10/10)
You can see “Religious Blogs” in the lower right-hand corner, east of the “Sea of Zero (0) Comments” and southwest of the “Blogosphere (Core Region)”.

tmatt ‘Bible-toting bullies with webcams?’, GetReligion (5/10/10)
and in the same vein
Jeff Kunerth ‘Religion plays different roles in cyberbullying debate‘, Orlando Sentinel (5/10/10)
as well as
Erica Brown ‘Outrage at humanity’s use of technology‘, Washington Post (7/10/10)

Elizabeth Drescher ‘Gen X, Gadgets, and God‘, Religion Dispatches (8/10/10)

Reuters ‘Brazil “values voters” go YouTube against prez hopeful Rousseff‘, FaithWorld (8/10/10)

Phew! That’s broken the back of it. Some more tomorrow, then we return to our regular programming schedule.

Presumably in honour of ‘Burn a Koran Day’ on the 11th of September QUT employee Alex Stewart, who works in the university’s legal services department, posted a video to YouTube (since removed) that featured him rolling ‘joints’ with pages from the Qur’an, then the Bible. Stewart started to suspect things may have gotten out of hand when The Courier Mail (click there for a still-live video) turned up two days later to ask if the marijuana was fake, which Stewart confirmed as grass clippings. Police were reported as unconcerned his performance may have been illegal. He started this thread on the Brisbane Atheists Meetup group, and a day later expressed worry (since deleted) that he may lose his job over a comment by QUT’s VC Peter Coaldrake:

In honour of the Pope’s highly successful tour of England (a.k.a the Roman Invasion) and in the spirit of complete bias in reporting, I’ve decided to play advocatus diaboli to Andrew’s advocatus Dei.

It’s amazing what you find by being literal with Google: who would have thought that there was a Jewish iPhone Community website: I mean, apart from the Jewish iPhone community?

In flat contradiction to the offlining movement, the Jewish iPhone community is advocating for Yom Kippur in glorious MP3.

Similarly a Cincinnati-based congregation is offering live stream of High Holidays services to the pocket of your choice.

Offlining during Yom Kippur is an understandably Jewish response to contemporary hyper-connectivity. Yet, both of my examples above fit well into another very  Jewish tradition, that of tikkun olam (תיקון עולם‎), a Hebrew phrase that means “repairing the world.” The concept originated in the early rabbinic period from the performance of ritual mitzvot (commandments or religious obligations). It was given new meaning under Lurianic Kabbalah, in which God contracted part of God’s self into vessels of light to create the world. These vessels shattered and their shards became sparks of light trapped within the material of creation. Prayer, especially contemplation of various aspects of the divinity (sephirot), releases these sparks and allows them to reunite with God’s essence.

The question is, can cyber-space also contain these sparks to redeem? Given the existence of 4chan it’s easy to argue that the virtual world needs all the repairing it can get.

Jewish iPhone Community website, ‘Yom Kippur in mp3‘

Jonah Mandel, ‘Rosh Hashana online; Yom Kippur services go mobile‘, The Jerusalem Post (09/07/2010)

Dr. Lawrence Fine, ‘Tikkun in Lurianic Kabbalah‘, MyJewishLearning.com

BONUS REFERENCE! Blogger Velveteen Rabbi gathers together a whole bunch of Yommy sparks from across the cyber-expanse here and here.

Austrian nationalists the Freedom Party recently hosted flash game Moschee Ba Ba (Bye Bye, Mosque) on their website. It has since been taken down, but the site still shows the basis of the game: a stylised skyline of Styria province. Apparently minarets (some complete with muezzins) would periodically bob up for the player to shoot down. A notice now graces the site that translates (roughly) to:

Dear visitors

Due to the banned political influence of our enemies this game has been forbidden by the Austrian Justice!

Now you decide on 26th September…

(Apologies to all Austrians, I’m sure there’s all sort of nuance lost.)

A political ad from the lead up to the Swiss referendum

Aside from the Swiss referendum on minarets last November (see above), this stems from a more recent Austrian debate sparked, in part, by Anas Schakfeh, one leader in Austria’s Muslim community, who said that he hoped for a future in which a mosque with a visible minaret would be in each of Austria’s nine provinces. The game originally ended with the message:

Styria is full of minarets and mosques. So vote for Dr Gerhard Kurzmann and the Freedom party on 26th September so that this doesn’t happen.

Styria currently has no minaretted mosques, so this statement must refer to the ‘near future’ depicted in the game, but the player is obviously left to infer what they wish.

via ‘Far-right anti-mosque video game triggers outrage in Austria‘, Reuters (1/9/10)

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.