]]>“What's the big deal about going to some building every Sunday, I mean, isn't God everywhere?”
“Don't you think the almighty has better things to worry about than where one little guy spends one measly hour of his week?”
“And what if we've picked the wrong religion? Every week we're just making God madder and madder?”
His daftness reaches its apotheosis on page 283, when he baldly states: 'All history is a myth. ' Poppycock, Mr Baigent. You shouldn't judge proper historians by your own lamentably low standards of rigour and research.
Michael Baigent piles speculation on conspiracy theory in The Jesus Papers, says Jonathan Bouquet
]]>Armstrong does not believe the Axial sages had all the answers. None of them was a woman, for a start, and none had to deal with the militant secularism of our time. She implies that she can improve on their efforts. With great respect, I doubt it. Her 'Axial Age' is already as dated as the existentialism which its inventor, Karl Jaspers, thought would replace traditional faith. We shall see whether Karen Armstrong's Axialism finds as many disciples as the sages of old - or even any at all.
Daniel Johnson reviews The Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong.
]]>]]>Madonna has kicked off her world tour with a controversial stunt that saw her hanging from a giant cross wearing a crown of thorns.
The Sony strategy, following the Sitrick model, was to try to turn the controversy over The Da Vinci Code to the film’s advantage. There was no way to stop a Christian critique of Brown’s ideas, but, if leading Christian voices could somehow be coaxed into an association with the “Da Vinci” movie, the criticism might seem less like an attack and more like engagement. Many in Hollywood remembered the passionate reaction to Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988), which proved to be a public-relations nightmare for Universal. It was better, to paraphrase Lyndon Johnson, to have the Christians inside the theatre, discussing “Da Vinci,” than outside, picketing.
]]>]]>You'd think God would know exactly what He's doing, but He doesn't. He's a tinkerer. He tries something out—what if I move all the water around so dry land can appear? He checks it out. He sees “that it was good.” Then He moves on to the next experiment—how about plants? Let's try plants.
“It's to show the extent that our feelings have been hurt,” said the group's general secretary Joseph Dias, speaking of the “fast unto death” call if the government fails to take action.
He denied the hunger strike was irresponsible. “It's a more Christian way of doing things rather than pulling down things and tearing them up,” he said.
Da Vinci Code release sparks calls for fatal hunger strikes in India
]]>]]>… Inside, as the sun faded, the noises started again. I looked at some other pictures I had taken before and found one I hadn't noticed where Baron's eyes glowed a faint eerie red. Staying in the house for another night was a terrifying prospect. I was being forced to accept that some sort of evil supernatural entity was making a residence and destroying my life and my wellbeing. Looking in the downstairs bathroom mirror, my skin was almost china-pale, with dark veins showing through. The corruption that was overtaking the house was starting to get me as well. …
]]>… Fifty-six percent of its contributors have received research funding, speaking or consulting fees, or other forms of financial compensation from drug companies, the recent study reported (though the authors did not determine whether these relationships existed before, during, or after the experts worked on the manual).
The study's lead author concluded that such connections are troubling because pharmaceutical firms “have a vested interest in what mental disorders are included in the DSM.” …
Amato, addressing a Catholic conference in Rome, called the book “stridently anti-Christian .. full of calumnies, offences and historical and theological errors regarding Jesus, the Gospels and the Church.”
He added: “I hope that you all will boycott the film.”
Boycott Da Vinci Code film top Vatican official
]]>]]>For the past three weeks, lawyers on both sides of the Atlantic have been puzzling over a series of strange italicisations in Mr Justice Smith's 71-page judgment, which was handed down on April 7. The odd letters appeared to crop up randomly throughout the text and most people assumed they were typographical errors. But on closer examination, a pattern has emerged.
The first clue - the word claimants with the s in italics - is found in paragraph one of the document. In the next paragraph, the m in claimant is italicised. Read together, the italicised letters in the first seven paragraphs spell out the self-referential legend “Smithy code”.
They will be coming to see the Integratron, a dome-shaped building said to have been commissioned in 1953 by creatures from outer space; to view the Giant Rock, site of the early rallies; to hear tales by those who say they've had experiences with extraterrestrials; to see demonstrations of “new technologies” by UFO experts; and to enjoy a UFO-themed opera and art exhibits.
Aliens are groovy folk:
]]>Harris said the philosophy of peace and harmony with aliens fostered during the old rallies is an important counterweight to today's portrayals of extraterrestrials as hostile invaders — E.T., of course, being an exception. Earthling contactees describe “alien people who were here to help humanity,” Harris said.
]]>That's the problem facing Malaysia's space agency as it prepares to send the country's first astronaut into orbit in 2007, Reuters reports. According to Zainol Abidin Abdul Rashid of Malaysia's space science institute, “following Earth time and facing in the direction of Earth are the key elements to solving the problem”.
]]>An intellectual journalist equally at leisure in the jaunty pages of Esquire (where he reviewed films) and the ascetic quarters of Partisan Review, Macdonald — born 100 years ago last month — was a generalist whose specialty was capsizing conventional wisdom, exposing highfalutin fraudulence and filing heretical dissents. His essays on mainstream American culture ("Masscult and Midcult") and the barbarisms of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible were literary events; his lambasting of James Gould Cozzens's novel "By Love Possessed" was comparable to Mark Twain's defenestration of James Fenimore Cooper; his tenure as founding editor of Politics, a small radical publication started in 1944 after he broke with Partisan Review over the war (he opposed America's entry), yielded major work by Simone Weil, Albert Camus and Bruno Bettelheim; his impious critiques of biblical epics — later collected in "On Movies" — were cheerfully absurdist (from his review of "The Greatest Story Ever Told": "There was also that 'Woman of No Name' who pushes through the crowd as Jesus is healing the sick and, after he has grappled with her, cries out in purest Bronx, 'Oi'm cured! Oi'm cured!' and turns around to run toward the camera with arms waving in triumph — and damned if it isn't Shelley Winters"); his championing review of Michael Harrington's "Other America" in 1963 helped ignite the antipoverty movement.