Would capsules of pig fat in plane seats deter an Islamic Fundamentalist suicide bomber?

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Rumors of War (Pershing the Thought)

The logic of an irrational deterrent, such as pig fat, which is really an imaginary weapon unless god is a nasty piece of work himself, seems at first glance to be less of a moral dilemma to me than other inevitable anti-muslim stereotyping and encroachment on civil liberty that a less stable society brings with it.

However, I suspect that, because religious beliefs are irrational, they are actually based often on subconscious convenience.

In other words, if being covered in pig fat prevented you from being a martyr, the belief system of people who conveniently distort the very nature of a loving god by killing in his name would evolve around this inconvenient fact and it would only be a deterrent against the majority of moderate muslims - who would be the recipients of prejudice.

According to the results of this 14,000 person study about how much all of the various Abrahamic sects hate each other in various parts of the world, there is a little reported fact due to the focus on Muslim vs Christian relations.

86% of French view Jews favorably (almost exactly the same number as view Christians favorably: 87%) much more than in the US, UK or, in particular, Spain which would appear to be the place to look objectively for signs of the fastest growing anti-semitism.

There is also less difference in absolute percentage terms between how favorably people view Jews vs Christians in Germany than in the US.

Not what squarely unbalanced Fox News would have us believe.

Survey highlights Islam-West rift

‘The Da Vinci Code’: Is it worthy?

“Experts can’t figure out how Dan Brown’s so-so writing has produced such a blockbuster.”

The success of the Da Vinci Code has nothing to do with the writing, but the fact that it is a mutation of a very successful and ancient meme.

There is another book that is inexplicably successful, depite being an incoherent mishmash of styles, often not that well written and full of plot inconsistencies and contradictions - the Bible.

Of all the possible stories that resonate with the human mind, the Bible does so very successfully, giving the appearance of its success being testament to its truth, something that is obviously very helpful for a book based on teleological argument. To suggest that the Bible is the truth because it is so successful, however, is the result of looking the wrong way down the funnel of time.

The fact that one thing may be more successful than others over time is what makes the selfish gene appear selfish and the Bible appear deliberate. Instead it is merely the archetypal story that fits a pre-existing niche in our consciousness.

That niche has been previously inhabited by other stories, from Amun Ra to Zeus, but more interestingly a weaker but persistent species of christianity has been around for half a millennium and the Da Vinci Code is its latest mutant, pop culture variety.

Umberto Eco pointed out that this species includes myths surrounding the Rosicrucians and the Masons - and more disturbingly, by the lie that is the ‘Protocol of the Elders of Zion’. They are variants not of the same story but the same meme, the exact plot or details, being analogous to the relation between genotype and phenotype.

The Da Vinci code is a work of fiction, its a story about these memes rather than one of them itself. In practice, however, with powerful memes, there is no distinction and this is something that the Catholic church knows, because its in the business. Some people have a tendency to actually start to believe some types of pure fiction.

If you take the Da Vinci Code as the latest mutation of the Rosicrucian Myth then it is a strain which attacks the core nervous system of Christianity and in particular the Catholic variety.

Catholicism has a very successful infrastructure, because it is based upon geometric accrual of money and mindshare distributed to and via and arithmetic number of proselytizers. It does this through an a sexual priesthood and infrastructure.

This asexuality is justified, or at least sanctified, because the Christian Idol - Jesus, doesn’t marry or have kids. (In fact he even manages to de-sexualize the Pagan Easter fertility rite, eggs and all, with asexual birth through resurrection.)

Here, in a so-so piece of pulp fiction the type you might pick up at an airport, you have the same religious idea that appealed to the masses, being used to undermine one of the core tenets of that original idea. The Da Vinci Code is more of a threat to the Catholic church, than Gallileo or the truth ever was because it can infect minds that are already closed to the truth.

Of course the Da Vinci Code will probably not amount to much, but the Vatican is not so dumb in its seemingly alarmist assessment.

On the subway yesterday there was a guy preaching love in the name of Jesus, at the top of his voice. He seemed pretty angry - but he was preaching ‘gods love’ so I guess that was supposed to be OK.

Then he started talking about what should happen if a woman were to lie down with another woman etc. (i.e. encouraging people to murder gays) as it says in the nasty, brutish book that people call the holy bible.

I don’t tolerate this kind of aggressive religious intolerance - so I told him to shut up. This made things very uncomfortable, nearly everyone in the carriage now looked at me as the devil incarnate and rallied in support of the preacher - saying amen after everything he said.

If I mentioned that it was in Harlem and on a Sunday, and that therefore the whitey in a very religious area should probably have kept his mouth shut, does that change anything? It only changes things if you are guilty of the silent, patronizing kind of racism, that the white middle class think is the opposite - and anyway, I was on a pilgrimage to celebrate the Devil’s music itself, Jazz, and its glorious Harlem heritage.

Anyway, note to self - do not tell a preacher to shut up on a crowded carriage, unless you are also dressed as a preacher and carrying a bible - in which case you can be as aggressive as you want and everyone will think you are nice.

Douglas Rushkoff has an excellent post today on why its a dangerous thing to tolerate all religion.

:: Douglas Rushkoff - Weblog ::