On Tuesday night a couple of friends and I went to see the Body World 2 exhibit at the Franklin Institute. Beforehand one of my companions put me on the phone with his Catholic girlfriend who expressed how distasteful she found the entire concept. I admitted that when I first heard about it, I had had doubts, but that after thinking it over I decided that such an exhibit was not simply gratuitous spectacle, but educational and in a way that could not be readily duplicated with anatomical models. Given that, I have no objections to the bodies being displayed in poses that have artistic merit.

Her objection centered around the “sacredness” of the human body after death. Knowing that I’m an atheist she chose to deny that this position had anything to do with her beliefs, and noted that the human body after death was also held to be sacred by the pagan Greeks and ancient Egyptians. It was interesting and telling that even when trying to think outside of her own religious beliefs, she still defaulted to some form of religion. Recognizing that it would be hard to argue the issue with someone who couldn’t zero out belief in the supernatural, I chose not to pursue the matter and essentially agreed to disagree. She said that she didn’t want to ruin the exhibit for me, which left me thinking that she felt she had won a point in this debate, but I chose to avoid conflict rather than pointedly saying that she hadn’t said anything to ruin it because the argument that a corpse is sacred in other religions too does not address a nonreligious point of view.

She then asked, twice, if it was just out of curiosity that I wanted to attend such an exhibition. This made me think that my friend was laying more responsibility on me than was strictly accurate for this outing, but perhaps he did not want to argue the matter with a scandalized Catholic any more than I did. She was giving me an out, but the fact is to take the out of “mere curiosity” would bring me back into conflict with some of my previous apprehensions about this show in the first place. I again said that it was educational and then repeated myself the second time. I was then able to steer the conversation onto other topics.

It should be noted that if I had any doubts about the consent of the donors or the origins of the bodies, I would strongly object to such an exhibit. As it is, no substantiated allegations have been made against Dr. von Hagens.

My local library has reusable bags for sale that are a great size for carrying books, but could be used for all sorts of things. I’d been considering buying one at 7$ and then they introduced an occasional display of those bags filled with books for 10$ so I decided to wait until one came with a few books I was actually interested in. The thing is the books in the bag were sorted by interest. For example, there would be a bag full of romance novels or a bag full of books by Jack Higgins. The books came from those which are donated to the “Friends of the Library” for re-sale.

Today I finally found a bag with books I’m interested in including John Stewart’s America, Dave Barry’s Tricky Business, a biography of Anthony J. Drexel and a novel, 1812, which I’d been meaning to read anyway. There are two other books as well, the Swift Boat Veterans book about John Kerry, Unfit for Command, and a book by Dan Quayle; I will probably be sending those two to my father. I somehow doubt this particular selection of books was targeted at a twenty-something girl.

Speaking of books, on Saturday afternoon I went to a local book fair. I behaved myself and didn’t buy anything. There are always a lot of self-published authors at these things, I admire them for not only finishing a book, but then to be willing to sit at a small table for hours and hours on Saturday trying to sell it at something like 2$ over cost.

At the book fair, the Scientologists had a huge ugly yellow tent with a huge yellow truck parked beside it with the slogan, “Something Can Be Done About It”. I don’t know what “it” is, but I’m pretty sure Scientology isn’t the answer.

Speaking of religion, that same day a “Pagan Pride Festival” was being held in the park near my apartment. I drove by on my way to the book fair and noticed that it looked an awful lot like a “Presbyterian Pride Festival” only with fewer baked goods and more pentagrams. I was disappointed.

I’m not a fan of attack ads. I’d match rather hear why I should vote for someone, rather than why I should vote against their opponent. Still I’m amused by this ad for John McCain. There should be more political ads featuring the work of Cecil B. DeMille. Obama missed a great opportunity by not creating an attack ad aimed at Clinton and featuring a clip from Cleopatra. I’d like to make an attack ad aimed at this entire presidential race and featuring clips from The Greatest Show on Earth.

Speaking of which, my mother commented that she too wished they would focus more on their own platforms in the commercials which are running ad nauseum in their area. I explained that their platforms were quite simple really, Barack Obama is for change while John McCain is for making a difference.

On Wednesday night, I had the rather unusual experience of attending a bible study. My grandmother had mentioned that she found this particular bible study to be somewhat more indepth than others. The study is lead by the pastor of her church and is currently spending eleven weeks on the Book of John.

This week the focus was on specifically the parts of John that involve bread, fish and a disabled guy who has been waiting by a pool of water that he thinks will heal him if he manages to get into it before anyone else when an underground spring causes the water to stir:

5:5 Now a man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years. 5:6 When Jesus saw him lying there and when he realized that the man had been disabled a long time already, he said to him, “Do you want to become well?” 5:7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. While I am trying to get into the water, someone else goes down there before me.” 5:8 Jesus said to him, “Stand up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 5:9 Immediately the man was healed, and he picked up his mat and started walking. (Now that day was a Sabbath.)

5:10 So the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and you are not permitted to carry your mat.” 5:11 But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’” 5:12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?” 5:13 But the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped out, since there was a crowd in that place.

5:14 After this Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “Look, you have become well. Don’t sin any more, lest anything worse happen to you.”

Excerpts taken from NETBible

The main discussion points, aside from the stuff about feeding a whole lot of people on a budget, pertained to the above quoted passage from Chapter 5. The first was a discussion about why Jesus might bother to ask if the man wanted to be healed. This diverged into an initially reasonable analysis of the idea that some people may not be ready or willing to be cured of whatever it is that ails them. This was all fine and dandy until the pastor gave of an example of counseling a rape victim (a mentally disabled rape victim, it was suggested) after her assault for the period of a year, at the end of which the pastor decided that she did not really want to be helped because she enjoyed being a victim. The pastor reached this conclusion because the girl did not seem to be gaining any ground from their sessions.

There are so many things wrong with this that it is hard to know where to start. First and foremost, the idea that a woman should recover from such an assault in the period of a year is completely arbitrary. I might hope that if a woman were seeking treatment after such an event some coping skills might be gained in that period, but a failure in that department would almost entirely rest on the shoulders of the counselor. Which brings me to another point, the pastor assumed that the problems lie entirely with the woman who had been assaulted and not with her abilities as a counselor, a dubious proposition at best considering that she was able to in perfect confidence to use this story to illustrate a point about people wanting to remain victims. The arrogance of this woman is just astounding.

The participants in this study then pushed aside their own insecurities about the issues they secretly harbored and now wondered if they really wanted to be set free of, and moved on to the physical ailments they suffered and would soon believe to be evidence of their sins incarnate. This lie for an eye philosophy was born out of Jesus telling the newly healed man that he should go forth and sin no more lest something worse befall him. The astounding thing about this group, is that not one single person suggested that the interpretation of this warning could be anything other than a suggestion that the man’s physical ailments were a result of some sort of immorality on his part.

On the other hand, the first, and only reasonable, interpretation that I came to was that Jesus was saying that sin, or a spiritual ailment, could eclipse a physical one, even one as serious as being “lame”. “Sinning is worse than limping,” or something like that. The text they were using for this Bible study didn’t even offer that idea for consideration. I kept quiet about my insight because I was still angry about what had been said earlier and didn’t want to give the pastor any fodder for her next sermon.

The fact is, spouting such archaic and foolish notions about the source of physical pathologies makes anyone who actually believes such rot look like an idiot, and so it seemed only fair not to give these morons a chance to sound somewhat brighter than they actually were. I did, however, tell my grandmother my take on it during the car ride home and she immediately saw the sense in it. I should note that she did not add anything to these discussions that I would have any reason to be ashamed of or offended by. She has always been a very sensible person … for a churchgoer, of course.

To top the evening off, there was some dialog about the place of religion in hospice care. One of the members attested to many staunch non-believers finding salvation in their last days through hospices that encourage religious poppycock. He followed this testimony up with the saying, “There are no atheists in foxholes,” which is enough to get me feeling a bit riled on a good day, but I was already so far past the point of being angry and a little frightened by the mentality presented that it just struck me as the perfect chord to end the night on (unfortunately there was still a prayer circle and a group hug to go) so …

While there may be no atheists in foxholes, there might just be one or two lurking in your Bible study.