Biblical Mistranslation

I was talking at work today with a female colleague who is a Christian. She wasn't aware of the very famous biblical mistranslation - the one concerning a virgin bearing a child.

In the hope of enlightening a few more people in this issue, here is a brief overview of how this came about. You can get a better description if you do a little search online or in books, including information on the exact words in question. It also really helps if you can read both Hebrew and Greek, but of course it's not essential in order to understand.

Basically, there was an intermediate step between the Hebrew translation of the bible and the English translation - into Greek. In the process of being translated - from Isaiah - 'young woman' was translated to the word that usually does mean virgin. The gospel-maker Mark then used this translation for the book in the New Translation, and gave birth (no pun intended) to the virgin birth myth.

If you find a decent modern bible you'll find that in Isaiah it talks of a child being born of a young woman, whereas in Mark it talks about a virgin.

That is our lesson for today. Enjoy.

Looming Presidential Elections..

The US Presidential Elections are flying towards us. I'm not American so I will clearly not be voting, but this is actually important for the whole world. It could be potentially quite frightening, but that depends on the outcome really.

I would love to get inside the head of someone who votes Republican. I can only assume they have a screw loose. Let's face it - it's riddled with fascists, and there are certainly many fascist supporters. That is something I find rather alarming.

That's not to say that the Democrats are the perfect choice. They clearly have policies that I don't agree with, and I'm going to focus on one in particular in a minute, but they are the only reasonable choice for a safe world. I read a blog quite recently that was written by Justin Sane of the band Anti-Flag - a great inspiration to me - and he was talking about his decision back in 2000 to vote for Nader. To him that was the most reasonable choice and who could blame him? It probably was - Bush or Gore? That's wasn't a great choice it was felt, but he says he wishes he'd voted Gore. This time round he's not going to make that mistake, and will be voting for Obama. Again, not because it's the perfect choice, but because it's the only real choice any person with a brain has. By voting for Obama (regardless of whether you think he's the best choice, but always better than McCain) you counter the votes for McCain. Let's face it - it'll be one of them getting in and you are best off voting for the one who is far far less dangerous.

Who are these people that vote Republican? And exactly where is it that they store their brains? Must be in a jar in a freezer somewhere - put away in storage until a time when they think they can make use of it. Consider the policies. Against abortion - taking away the right for women to choose what happens to their bodies. There are certainly cases when abortion is the right option. And adoption is not a reasonable solution. I'm assuming Republican supporters are prepared to adopt shitloads of unwanted children. All children should be wanted children. Against homosexual marriage - take us back to an earlier time when people were so ridiculously backwards that they believed homosexuality was wrong and unnatural. Don't be an idiot - of course it's natural, of course it's not contageous, and of course it's not dangerous for the continuation of the human race.

Then we get the ridiculous religious right. First of all, take you're archaic superstitions briskly out of the 21st century. Next - stop trying to get momentum for your ideas for legislation. Laws should not be made to suit you and your crazy religious nonsense. Laws should be made in such a way that they benefit everyone. If it doesn't harm another person, then it shouldn't be illegal. Love is fucking love. Get over this nonsense that only a man and a woman can be in love, or have a loving relationship. It's clearly not true. If you are at all homophobic please do us all a favour and remove yourself from the gene pool. Don't have children, and do not try to indoctrinate people with your homophobic ideas.

So, yes, if you are a Republican voter then I will simply assume you are a twat. Plain and simple. There's no excuse for voting for fascists. We've experienced plenty of horrible leaders in many different nations across the globe at different times and we don't need it again. Let's not make the mistake again.

Now the one thing that springs directly to mind on the issue of Obama. He's the only reasonable choice for president of the United States next, but a couple of hours ago I read something that made me a little disappointed. On the section of his website dedicated to the issues that are of concern he mentions faith. He mentioned faith alongside the issue of science. He talked about science being important, but that faith too was important. Since when was faith important or a good thing to have? It's simply not. What is faith? It's generally believing in something that you have absolutely no reason to believe in otherwise. If there is a reason to believe something then it isn't faith we are dealing with. I feel, therefore, that it is not wise to encourage faith.

America needs a nation of clever, enlightened people. Not a nation of idiots. The fact that the polls show that the candidates are so close most of the time demonstrates outright that there clearly are a lot of idiots in the country already. Fortunately they seem to form in groups and certain parts of the country seem to house intelligent people, while others house those that struggle to compete with toilet seats for the highest IQ.

This has really been one big rant and has focussed on attacking the Republicans outright, without a lot of justification. I have justification and I may focus on individual issues of concern over the next three weeks in the run-up to the election. If anybody happens to come and read through this and leave any comments, I may focus on those things individually.

Until next time,
Peace

The Weekend Approaches

It took quite a long time, but my blog is now working properly again. No more annoying message telling me that it is suspected that I am running a spammer blog.

It's quite late and I don't have a great many things to ramble on about so I'll keep this entry fairly brief, and about nothing in particular my weekend plans.

I'm going to have to start writing a report tomorrow concerning the work I did during the summer. The work basically consisted of investigating the properties of Lithium-drifted Silicon semiconductor devices and trying to work out just how radiation hard they can be. The hope is that there are devices that are sufficiently radiation-hard so they can be used at the sLHC. For anyone unaware of what the sLHC is, it is an upgrade for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN - located near Geneva. Yes - that LHC: the one that was started up, and after 10 days leaked helium before any experimentation even began.

On top of that I'll need to do a fair bit of studying. I even need to do a bit of reading up on electromagnetism - it's been that long since I've done it that the problems relating to it that I'm attempting to tackle successfully are not as clear as they should be. Also need to get a proper grip on the maths needed in order to really appreciate General Relativity & Gravitation.

Finally, I'll need to make sure I'm completely happy with the questions that the first years will be tackling at the tutorial on Monday. I had a skim over them earlier tonight and they seemed to be straight forward enough, but I don't want to be caught out by not being prepared for questions relating to them. Don't really want to look like the idiot who can't tutor people on the first year courses that I've done and passed three ages ago.

If I'm really lucky I'll try to fit in some time to write some music or simply sit and watch a DVD, considering I have 10 new DVDs to watch now. Tomorrow or sometime soon I may take a bit of time to discuss the upcoming US Presidental election. I may not be American, but this is a big deal for the whole world, and unfortunately a very large percentage of the US population are idiots. Fortunately, it doesn't look like the idiots will be taking over for another 4 years, but there are still three weeks or so to go, and things could certainly change for the worst in that time period.

Until then, peace.
xxxx

The Controversial Topic: Religious Scientists

This has been my topic of frustration this week. Maybe I'm being a little bit unreasonable but I would like to clarify and justify my position on this.

I find it really frustrating when a scientist has a religious belief. This is maybe not quite accurate. What I should probably say is that I find it really frustrating when a scientist has any silly superstitions. That covers more bases and explains what I mean a little bit better.

By this, I really mean that it's ridiculous for any scientist (or anyone that has to think rationally about a given subject) to believe in anything at all without a reason to do so. No reason to believe something is a perfectly valid reason not to believe it.

It's a strange notion that Monday to Friday a scientist can be sitting at a computer, simulating models of particle interactions and attempting to unlock the secrets of the universe and then when it comes to Sunday morning, go to a church service and believe that some megalomanical dictator in the sky was actually responsible for the things they were investigating through the week. This is a notion that is clearly beyond my way of thinking. In a way, it seems like you must have a way of separating your life into two distinct areas, chaning the way you think in each.

There seems to be no way to justify simultaneously requiring mountains of evidence in order to understand and believe a given natural phenomena, and also understanding and believing one particular things without that requirement. Why not extend it to all areas of your life? Why can't you be rational in all areas of your life? Demand that in order to be convinced that something is true you be shown the evidence.

I'm concerned at this point someone may suggest things like multiverses or Hawking Radiation, or wormholes as being such things that people believe in without coming across concrete proof of their existence. You would first have to appreciate that, unlike the archaic belief in deities, there are actually reasons to at least believe these phenomena are possible. Don't be fooled into thinking that it demonstrates that simply because the mathematics works out in the favour of such things, they must exist, and scientists must believe they exist. This simply isn't true. In fact, it's plausable that these suggestions are nonsense. We haven't even established how many dimensions exist in the universe we're in - this kind of thing could affect the above examples. It can be seen, however, that these are possible explanations for the goings-on of the universe - hypotheses.

This is very distinct from the notion that one particular deity - who cannot be seen, heard, felt, or even questioned - exists beyond all certainty. Apart, that is, from a select few, who have the dual ability of being one of God's chosen people to spread the word on this earth, and of not being of sound mind. They have counterparts who have managed to get themselves abducted by aliens, probed, and then discarded onto earth again. Why aliens haven't attempted to probe our most influential intellectuals we may never know.

There is absolutely no reason to believe in a deity. There is no evidence anywhere that suggests the existence of such an elusive being, even though, according to Abrahamic religious beliefs, that very same said being wants us all to know that he cares deeply for us and does not want us to perish eternally for not believing in him. Fresh eyes on this sort of description would be throwing up red flags left, right and centre. People should be looking at this and thinking, "This is silly, clearly just an old fashioned campfire story". For some reason that doesn't always happen. Why is this? To be honest, I'm as confused as anybody else that questions religious belief.

You cannot justify rational thought in one area, and abandon it in another. There is reason to believe that the big bang happened, that the earth is 4.6 billion years old and that our species has evolved from very simply organisms over millions upon millions of years. There is no evidence that a supreme being designed, developed, patented and watched over this universe for 13.72 billion years (or 10,000 years if you are so inclined), and therefore it should not be thought by any scientist that this is what happened. No - it didn't. We can actually assert with a high degree of certainty that the God of the Abrahamic religions did not exist. It's very simply to see why, which I may cover another time, and certainly will if there are requests for my justification.

I apologise for singling out the God of the Judeo-Christian and Muslim beliefs but that being is the one that is most in contact with my day to day existence (oh, the irony), although the same thing extends to all deities, and indeed to all superstitious beliefs, be they ghosts, goblins, witchcraft, unicorns, walking under ladders or astrology.

I feel I've rambled on quite enough. I apologise also if there are many spelling and grammatical mistakes. Should I notice any I will edit to weed them out. Comments on this would be much appreciated - opinions, and hatemail is always enjoyed.

Locked

I received a disturbing email today informing me that it was suspected that I had a spammer account on here. It could be the case, therefore, that this is not published immediately. I had to type in an annoying hard-to-read series of letters (I'm not sure the term that blogger uses for it, but it was more difficult to read than others that I've come across).

That aside, I've felt rather busy. I've been concentrating on understanding tensors for the purpose of then understanding General Relativity & Gravitation. The amount I've spent on text books has increased since the last time. I've spent at least another £60, but cannot quite recall at what stage of purchasing I was at in the last entry, so it may well exceed that by about £50.

In other news I got another lip piercing yesterday - ring on the left side. I rather like it. I was asked by the attractive woman who pierced my lip if I was going to be getting the other side done, but I had to explain that I was in enough trouble as it was with this one and would have to wait a little bit before being able to embark on that idea. May well do so one day soon though. I'll need to make plans for tattoos now.

Last night - as well as two pairs of jeans, one black, and one tartan - I signed up to the organ donation register. I'm trying to find out how to get signed up to donate my whole body in the event of my death. A bit morbid to post this in a blog, but it's really important than medical research can be carried out with cadavers and they have to come from somewhere. Besides, I'm not going to be using it afterwards.

Final piece of information: I bought Box of the Dead, The Omen pentology, and "The '59 Sound" by The Gaslight anthem. It is a terrific album. I highly recommend giving it a listen.

I have a topic of discussion - and no doubt controversy - on my mind, and I'll post it in another blog shortly. For now I'm going to do a little bit of reading.