Mistaken for God

We've had a couple of recent posts and (for us) a lot of recent commentary about political figures being mistaken for gods (see Obama as Jesus and Political Saviors).

So I took note yesterday when I read about Raj Patel who is currently being (mis)taken for a god, following a recent appearance on "The Colbert Report" during which he revealed several biographical details that seemed to have been prophesied by Benjamin Creme, leader of Share International.

I immediately thought of a number of fictional "mistaken for god" situations--C3PO, Life of Brian, Capt. Kirk, Dr. Who--and realized that there must some wonderful true stories behind this meme.

A bit of digging about uncovered a few more cases.

There was Steve Cooper, who, while jobless, had the fortune of being mistaken for a Hindu goddess of fertility. He went with it, moved to India, and is worshiped as a god there to this day.

And then there was Neil Smith, a London engineer sent off to Siberia on a business trip where he was mistaken for a rock god, and wound up judging a beauty contest, appeared on the news, met Putin, and had young women faun all over him.

And lest we forget, there are the U.S. Army Rangers:



And of course Act 14:8-18 tells how Paul and Barnabus were mistaken for Roman gods after performing a miracle.

But the most amazingly pertinent story of all is the tale of Capt. Cook, who landed in Hawaii and was mistaken for a god. My god! but what a royal welcoming that fellow must've enjoyed. I believe that this was in 1776, the year that the United States declared it's independence.

And now we have, ironically, in these United States, a Hawaiian who has been heralded as a god and elected as the leader of our nation.

Capt. Cook met his poetic justice when storms crippled his departure from the Kona coast and he was forced to limp back for repairs. The locals saw through Cook's facade--and killed him. Cook's hubris, it could be argued, did him in.

I am scared of the tea baggers. I am scared of twittering idiots. I am scared of the sipsey street irregulars.

What have we become?

Do Believers Breed More?

Daurade recently raised an interesting question during a conversation with me via blog comments: Are atheist couples more likely to be childless? Daurade quoted extensively from "Childfree" in Wikipedia.

Not long after reading Daurade's comments, I happened, independently, upon two relevantly related websites. There's an old axiom that anecdotes ain't data, but I'm working hard at being mindful of synchronicity, so ... let's see what can be gleaned from these two offerings.

First, I happened, independently of my conversation with Daurade, upon The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. These folks don't outright state that they don't believe in God. They also don't outright state that they don't believe in humor. But it's not hard to read between the lines. Here's their fun loving uncle: Nonbreeder.

Second, I happened upon the recent NY Times article "God Said Multiple, and Boy Did She", which tells the tale of the Yitta Schwartz, who:

"[When] she died last month at 93, she left behind 15 children, more than 200 grandchildren and so many great- and great-great-grandchildren that, by her family's count, she could claim perhaps 2,000 living descendants. Mrs. Schwartz was a member of the Satmar Hasidic sect, whose couples have nine children on average."

And as if all this weren't synchronicity enough to recent LoS conversations, the second article went on to note that "Mrs. Schwartz's ... may have generated one of the largest clans of any survivor of the Holocaust -- a thumb in the eye of the Nazi's" (emp. mine).

Well, I don't think that this settles the matter one way or the other, but consider this fact. Humans appear to be hardwired to be religious (cf, here and here). If you're fundamentalist, you might accept this as proof of God having creating humans. If you're non-fundamentalist, religious or not, you might accept this as evidence that evolution has favored Believers--which is in-and-of-itself a suggestion that Believers may breed more.

Consider one more point. There are also prolific breeders who don't couple up. Mostly men. Genghis Khan was said to have fathered over 1,000 children; by some estimates, 8% of all Asian men (and, I would assume Asian women, too) are descended from his line. And rape's not the only way down this road. There are also tales of prolifically breeding sperm donors, and there are plenty of modern day Don Juans like Wilt Chamberlain who claims to have slept with 20,000 women.

So there we have it -- point & counter point. Perhaps in the end, the religious command to be fruitful and multiple is simply a necessary compensation for the religious restriction to breeding monogamously and magnanimously.

So what do you think? Who breeds more and why?

To Do

There's only one thing that's important: Populate the universe.