Sunday 16 April 2000

Pic of the day: Is this the true face of a true believer? Read and find out!

I slept almost a full night but woke up rather tired. While I was cooking lunch a bit later, I lost some of the spaghetti (yet uncooked, I'm happy to say) on the floor. Shortly after that, I noticed that my legs were quite weak, as if I had just been running to exhaustion. But I had just been walking around indoors. I did not do anything extreme yesterday either, just walked to the grocers and later around the neighborhood. Strange. Perhaps I ran in my dreams; I cannot remember them, but I woke up quite tired.

The spaghetti, by the way, was a tagliatelle from Pasta Zara. I am sorry to say that it disappointed me: When cooked as I am used to, it had scattered hard lumps. I keep open the possibility that this is considered the height of refinement in Italy. If so, I think they should keep it. I found it disturbing. If the whole meal had been too hard, I would know that I should increase the cooking time. But scattered lumps?

Apart from eating, and taking a fairly short walk this time, I've been playing The Sims, Daggerfall and Alpha Centauri.

When playing Alpha Centauri, I have mostly been playing the ecological faction, "Gaia's Stepdaughters". I have not played through one game yet, but I also took up playing "The Believers" in a parallel game. I wanted to see if the game had a different feel for the different factions. There are some differences in bonuses and penalties, but so far I have not played long enough to see any major differences.

What I did see was that The Believers are portrayed rather differently from what I feel as a believer. They are rather militaristic, albeit not as much as the Spartans, the game equivalent of the National Rifle Association. They are at odds with the native ecology, and most notably they are doubly handicapped when it comes to gaining new knowledge. Now despite the expedition to Alpha Centauri being an international one, organized by the UN, it is clear what religion these Believers come from: References like "loaves and fishes" show it to be my all time favorite religion, Christianity.

I am aware that this religion too has spawned some strange fruits through the years and right up to our own generation. But I am somewhat defensive when you hold up a picture like that. If you glance at a world map, I think you won't see the Christian nations stand out as sinkholes of ignorance in the gleaming web of knowledge encircling the rest of the world. To be quite honest, it is usually the other way around.

There are some Christians who get a load of PR for their paranoia and stupidity, especially in the USA. I can see the entertainment value of that. But look at real, everyday people like me or even better, Al Schroeder of Nova Notes. Do we look like we want to attack people with different opinions, or like we are afraid of secular knowledge?

Mind you, the Roman Catholic Church is not my cup of tea, especially during the middle ages and a while after. As a true heretic, I might actually have lost my life if I had been active in some of those times. Even so, it behooves me to point out that they did not actually imprison astronomers for claiming that the world was round or that it moved around the sun. Galileo was disciplined not for his astronomical observations, but because he drew theological conclusions from them and publicized these. As a layman in the Catholic Church, he was not allowed to print theology. He was, however, allowed to print astronomy.

The Church has also made declarations to the effect that it does not deny the possibility of life on other planets, or evolution. And the Vatican actually mediated in a conflict between astronomers and cosmologists about the age of the univers. (The oldest stars seem to be older than the time that should have elapsed since the Big Bang. There has recently been another, intriguing explanation for this: The universe may still be accelerating.)

The Christian factions that get the PR today are, it seems, the "get rich quick" churches. I think of those who preach that if you have enough faith, you won't get sick, you can pray for money whenever you want something, stuff like that. A quick look at Jesus' life should convince anyone that material success never was a priority for him or his first followers. Now, I have only the best experiences with faith healing myself, but you should be aware that one of the four evangelists (Luke) was a physician. A doctor, as we simple folks call them. And I don't see neither Jesus nor his apostles wallowing in money at any time.

I want to express my sympathy for those of you who have suffered at the hands of rabid believers. I know that this happens. And certainly no one can force you to believe in the highly improbable message that we Christians belive in, that some guy back on the fringes of the Roman empire actually was resurrected from the dead, never to die again, and given the power to do the same to those who follow him. It's quite a tale, I give you that. And I for one am not going to preach it with a plasma rifle.

And that was this Sunday's sermon. If you don't feel like sitting down to meditate on that, you may always look at my Sims page with one new SimDiary. They happen sporadically, I'll try to keep you updated if there come more.