The Right Spin

Nearly every civilization has its creation myths. These myths were crafted in order to give a people an idea of their place within the cosmos and also reinforce the superiority of their belief system. In their myths they had proof that it was their gods that made things as they are. All other such stories had to be inferior.

Now, what I find interesting about creation myths is their very humanness. They are often full of drama and conflict. A soap opera on a cosmic scale isn’t a bad comparison. You can plainly see that these stories were penned by a human hand and brought to life in the human mind. It’s what you would expect a human to create, is what I’m trying to say. A writer writes what they know. They write from the human experience.

In many ancient civilizations what happened on Earth was merely a reflection of what has happening in the heavens. This brings to mind the Roman concept of religio licita (authorized religion).

This part is taken from the article “Parousia or Politics?”

When Rome granted citizenship to inhabitants of conquered lands, the result was a fusing of religions. Such persons were required to render allegiance to Rome through emperor worship and were allowed to worship their native gods.

The idea was that, in the cosmic scheme of things the Roman gods defeated your god/gods and since your god/gods presented no further threat you could continue to worship them but you must also pay some kind of homage to the Roman gods as well. Thusly, while you didn’t strictly adhere to Roman theology, your religion was an authorized religion. This worked particularly well for polytheistic religions because what was a few more gods added to the pantheon?

A problem only arose when a monotheistic religion was encountered – such as Judaism. But here a special exemption was made.

When Rome conquered the Jews, the Jews showed charters granted them that allowed them to observe their particular religious rites, which the Romans acknowledged. In places where Jewish colonies existed without charters, particularly in Rome, they were granted alien rites.

But I’m getting off topic. The point is that what was happening on earth was a reflection of what was happening amongst the gods so why wouldn’t creation itself be that same kind of drama?

This site has links to various other sites where many differing creation myths are detailed. The only thing I have a problem with, and it’s also the point of this post, is that the Christian/Jewish creation story is included with these other myths. And it’s not just because I’m a Christian that I have this issue. Spend a few moments and read over various stories that are there and you’ll see the human drama I’m speaking of. There’s sex, revenge, war, betrayal and everything you’d expect to see in a good human drama. Now, go read the Genesis account. There’s none of that! What it does have is a systematic series of events leading up to the creation of man. That’s it. Now, it doesn’t go into the detail we’d expect to find in a science textbook but that’s not what it’s suppose to do anyway. It was written to show that God is in control of creation and that there’s a specific order to it all.

In all honesty, the Genesis story is quite boring when compared to other creation myths of the time. In part these other myths were designed to entertain in addition to inform. But I think this is something that is quite interesting. Why does this story differ so from other creation stories of the time? Obviously the people who would become the Jewish people were aware of these myths, especially the Egyptian creation myths. Indeed there’s evidence that they brought those pagan practices with them into the desert after the exodus from Egypt! So, why this drastic change from that myth to their own version of the creation story? Indeed one should expect to see some elements of the Egyptian myths within the Genesis account but one doesn’t.

I submit that the reason for this is that, perhaps, the mind behind the Genesis account isn’t human.

Writers write what they know and when compared to its creation myth contemporaries the Genesis account has nothing going for it. “God created everything,” big deal. I can show you a dozen or so other stories that say the same things but are a lot more fun to read. A lot more real, too, in that I can identify with what’s happening in the drama. I see that my god or gods are real because what happens to them happens to me!

It’s that blandness and the non-effort to spice it up that I feels makes the Genesis story unique amongst all other creation myths. To even throw it into the category of “creation myth” completely ignores the elements of every other creation myth, for which Genesis has none besides a God, and ignores the precision at which it operates. Indeed, remove God from the Genesis story and you have a basic description of what science agrees happened “In The Beginning…”

I like George W. Bush. I really do. I think he's right on with so many issues and the more I read about his past the more I grow to respect and admire him. There's just one gripe I have:

Illegal Aliens

He's too lax. Are there jobs available in America that American workers don't want? Yes, I'm sure there are. But, is it not possible that they're unwanted because they pay too little? And giving these jobs to illegal aliens provides incentives to American employers to keep those jobs low paying. It's a vicious cycle.

I've never written it here before but my theory about the job problems in the U.S. is due to the cost of living. It's too high. Simply put, it's nigh impossible for a middle class family to maintain a middle class standard of living without both parents working. That's absurd. Now, I'm not advocating that women stay at home or anything like that but for thousands of years it was just that and everything went along fine. It's seemingly only within the past 30 years or so that has changed. And boy have there been changes! Too many to list here.

So, why must both man and wife work in order to maintain a middle class life style? What has changed and is it a change we really need?

With jobs going out over seas and illegals taking American low paying jobs there must be some kind of correlation between the two. I submit cost of living. Americans require too much of it to keep their life style and too much of it is required by that life style.

What happened to the days of the 40's and 50's when frugalness was key and yet you could still have a nice house and a car in the driveway? It seems to me there was a different mindset when it came to money and material possession. But now all that has changed. We live on a credit/debt based economy. The more debt we rack up the better or credit gets so that we can get even further in debt. It's not just on a civil level but on a governmental level as well. Politicians love to campaign on "balancing the budget" and Democrats love to hammer Bush about spending the budget surplus we had during the Clinton Administration. What they don't like saying is that at the end of the Clinton Administration we were in a recession. I ask them, how is that possible? Here we had this grand budget surplus but were in a recession and then GWB spends it and now the employment rate is at records lows and we're out of that recession and the economy is growing! That's because a surplus isn't good for a debt based economy.

It's a big mess and there's no easy fix. However, I do think that tightening the border and ensuring Americans get those "unwanted jobs" would be a great first step and GWB is in an excellent position to make sure that happens.

This piece was inspired by this piece.

It now appears that Giuliana Sgrena, former Italian hostage in Iraq and journalist for the communist publication Il Manifesto, seems to think the U.S. military was out to target her, as reported in this AP piece. It seems she vehemently opposes the war in Iraq and isn't afraid to say so (nor should she be). However, to think that whatever she may write in a communist publication would bother anyone in the Bush Administration is paranoid babbling. It defies logic so that to even trying to discuss it would only result in one slamming their head into a large piece of wood or plaster.

Additionally she decided to comment on the U.S.' policy of non-negotiation with hostage takers:

"The fact that the Americans don't want negotiations to free the hostages is known," the 56-year-old journalist told Sky TG24 television by telephone, her voice hoarse and shaky. "The fact that they do everything to prevent the adoption of this practice to save the lives of people held hostage, everybody knows that. So I don't see why I should rule out that I could have been the target."

So, the U.S. wanted to kill you because you gave hostage takers an incentive for kidnapping hostages? Perhaps some context should be given:

"Asked whether ransom was paid, Agriculture Minister Giovanni Alemanno said it was "very probable." An Iraqi politician, Younadem Kana, said he had "nonofficial" information that $1 million was paid..."

Yeah, looks like the terrorists were paid a cool million to let her go. Perhaps that's the U.S.' incentive to take her out? To tell the Italian government that if they decide to pay terrorists we'll kill the hostage anyway. I suppose that's one way to deter further stupitity.

So, what will Sgrena say when the numbers of Italian kidnappings increase and American decrease? How will she blame that on us?

Even when brought face-to-face with evil ideology will still make people blind to the truth.

Picked up the "promotional soundtrack" to Hitman 2: Silent Assassin. It is damn sweet! It's a mix of full orchestral and a bit of electronic music. Now, I never played the game, beyond a PC demo, which I thought was okay but it was the music that gripped me. I now must purchase to full soundtrack (22 tracks instead on my 15)!

Update: