I am really upset.
Someone had the brilliant idea to pick the current "7 wonders of the world" by using the internet and have nerds vote on them, just like American Idol, the current cultural beacon. All of the original wonders , picked around 500 BC, are long gone, except for the pyramid at Giza. Guess what happened! The idiot catholics of Brazil got to e-mailing (or be excommun icated?) everyone and told them to vote for "Christ the Redeemer" idol, a 130' tall reinforced concrete statue, built in 1930. Actually, leaving the catholics out of it , the other six choices were not too bad. The Collosseum, Tasj Mahal, Great wall, Petra, Machu Picchu and Chitzen Itza.
However, there is nothing later than 1632 (Taj) other than Jesus. This is telling us that the greatest undertaking by mankind in the last 400 years that is full of wonder is this stupid statue? Roebling's Brooklyn Bridge? Some great tunnel project? The Petronis towers? Eiffel Tower? The greatest Gothic church? Maybe it's like Mel Brook's 1,000 year old man says "Saran Wrap!". Yellow stickies? How about duct tape?
Regarding the leader of the entire world.
I have heard that Christians, Jews, Catholics but mostly Fundamentalist Xians litterly believe that the world was made by Mr. God pretty much about 6,000 BC. However, during the last few hundred years scientists have kind of established the earth to be around 4.5 billion years old, give or take a few million years. My really serious question
is this; Does King Bush II really believe this and that Noah got all the animals, bugs, cockroaches, mosquitos, and virus together in a small boat to float around for 40 days. He must realise that the water would have to be 29, 997.5 feet deep to cover all the mountains. Where did that amount of water come from? More important, where did it go? There are serious people still spending huge amounts of Euros still looking for an Ark. There seems to be a serious gap somewhere between billions of years and 8,000 years in these peoples belief systems.
However, I'm encouraged recently to see so many aethiests coming out of the closet, not so much that they don't believe in a supreme guy but that religion is responsible for so much of humanities misery.
I've just finished a book about the Knights Templar, and the 200 years war the Christians waged in the middle east. I've always wondered how all those thousands of knights were enticed to throw away their lives to go on a long trip (Years!) to capture Jerusalem from a group who had a little different take on old Jesus. It turns out to be a stroke of genius on the part of the popes (Pope Innocent III!!) . Just sign up for a crusade and all your sins will be forgiven. (We don't seem to have 70 virgins in heaven). Also you may keep all the booty and rape all the young Muslem girls you can get your hands on. (Where do I sign?). I don't know if anyone ever had the patience to add all the live's lost on all sides for the 200 years, but in just one small chapter, I counted about 300,000 souls sent to Hell of Heaven by the Crusaders. We're talking men, women and children here. Of course this was what the popes had sent them to do.
Funny how things don't change much, isn't it? A thousand years later we're back doing the same thing to the Muslims (and vice versa) except instead of Jerusalem, our goal is sacred Oil. Well, how else do you expect us drive our guzzler Humvees around to the grocery store?
