Archive for the ‘Shit Happens’ Category
The comparative religion of “Shit Happens”
Circulating on the Internet, and also available in postcard form, is an extended riff on the theme of ‘Shit Happens’ and the treatment of this fundamental truth in the various religions. It ranges from the theologically fairly serious (Lutheranism’s ‘Shit happens, but have faith anyway’ and Calvinism’s ‘Shit happens to those who don’t work hard [...]
Shit Happened because of your TV show
Religion is, among other things, a side-effect of the way that parents exploit the great truth that Shit Happens for the purpose of controlling their children. That is, whenever Shit Happens to the child, the parents may attribute it to some act or wish on the child’s part that was inconvenient to them, however tenuous [...]
The Wheel of Fortune and the cosmic gears
One of the many things that people fondly imagine that they ‘know’ is that the Middle Ages were static, a thousand years in which everyone knew their place and nothing much happened. Such a perception is actually a variant on the eternal ‘things ain’t what they used to be’ topos; just as we think that [...]
The lion, the lamb and the mission child
There is a little children’s table grace in a certain European language that goes, in literal translation, ‘Thou that giveth the little bird its food, bless thou our meal O God.’ This provokes a couple of questions: whether the children of Christians notice the contradiction when singing this ditty over a chicken dinner; and whether [...]
Payback time
C.S. Lewis once asked what we would feel if we were told that we had to share Heaven with an entirely unrepentant Adolf Hitler. He thought it would offend people’s sense of justice. The same would probably apply even if Hitler had repented. Hitler’s sins and ours may be equally heinous and equally forgivable in [...]
I am winning, ergo God exists
How people actually reason about the big questions can be seen from the throwaway details of popular entertainment. When Ben, the leader of The Others in ‘LOST’, finds he has a tumour in his back and then immediately a plane breaks up over his little archipelago and drops a spinal surgeon into his lap, he [...]
