Resurrection - harder than it looks?

Part III of the ‘I Believe in Miracles’ series of articles for Frodology

Religions are usually chock full of miracles, and it's a good thing too, because otherwise they'd be as boring as going to church, and no one likes going to church. Not even Jesus. But full of entertaining, jaw-dropping, and stupefyingly improbable events as they are, religions keep you, me and Jesus sufficiently amused for an hour each week, bridging the gap between Sunday morning TV and brunch.

But in depending on their audiences' stunned credulity, religions are also extremely vulnerable. Because what if they're false?

If I understand my theology, and I think I do, Jesus was stapled to a more or less crossish plank of wood and left to die, which he eventually did after several Ridley Scott-inspired drawn out and highly dramatic sequences. Then, with a stunning Ronald Reagan-like refusal to die, he rose from the dead, and in doing so spawned a whole subgenre of amateurish horror films.

Now, the problem posed is that science currently doesn’t recognize resurrection as an activity of which humans are generally capable, opposable thumbs notwithstanding. Certainly, if we peruse history, we encounter several near misses:

• In 1099, legend has it that El Cid fought off Death’s scythe and led his troops to victory over the Muslim hordes at the gates of Valencia. What the Muslims didn’t know was that El Cid had died and was simply strapped to his horse. He would later not come back to life.


• Lord of Gondor and companion of Frodo, Boromir son of Denethor fought and killed several Uruk-hai while nursing a chest full of arrows. He died shortly thereafter, and other than a deleted scene in the subsequent film, would not come back to life either.


• Jesus… oh, wait, never mind.


• Anastasia Romanov was the daughter of the last Czar of Russia, and though believed for decades to have been murdered by Bolsheviks in 1917, was suspected by some still to be alive. A 1997 Disney film based on the myth captured the hearts of millions of children, until her decomposed body was discovered an almost comically short time later to prove that, no, in fact, she had died as advertized.

So, if Jesus was actually resurrected, history isn’t going to help us and we need to examine the hard science behind his particular case.

Possibility #1 – Jesus was a zombie

It has been demonstrated by countless films and highly unverifiable folklore that humans are capable of resurrection, the unfortunate caveat being that they become zombies. The traditional view of the zombie, or ‘undead’, is that of a mindless automaton that eats ‘brains’. This is of course a sexed up Hollywood stereotype. Prudent zombies are thought to be every bit as clued up on the dangers of hematophagy as a disease vector as we are, and are more discriminate in their consumption of blood products these days for the risk of HIV.

The one bit of evidence in support of this theory is that zombies are unhindered by serious blood loss. It is thought that Jesus’ own blood loss would have been prodigious due to his hemophilia which he would have inevitably inherited due to the eons of inbreeding kicked off by Adam and Eve.

Possibility #2 - Jesus was an immortal wizard

Alternatively, it is possible that, like Gandalf, Jesus was a wizard who couldn’t die, even after falling from a very great height and then climbing back up that very great height, all the while hacking and slashing at a demon wrought from smoke and fire.

Yeah, that'd be cool.

Possibility #3 - Jesus never lived

We must also recognize the chance that Jesus never lived in the first place. The so-called 'Jesus Myth' hypothesis, popularized by certain scholars of the ancient Middle East, states that the historical person of Jesus Christ was most likely an inanimate sack of flour, or perhaps a scarecrow. Accordingly, the physical attribute of never being alive would have made death less of a problem for Jesus, and crucifixion a mild inconvenience at most. 

It's all coming together...

The only complication still being researched by scientists is a linguistic one. The problem is it is not known whether 'to resurrect' is a reflexive verb. Those who argue a subject can resurrect itself have some explaining to do, as it is generally thought that dead people are incapable of acting out verbs.

---

Please feel free to read the other articles in the ‘Miracles’ series:
Part I - Is Jesus out of blood by now?
Part II - How hard is it for virgins to give birth?

New Jesus action figures!

A Frodologist correspondent, Katie White, recently caught up with the manufacturer of a new series of Jesus action figures, Ben Ryan, for an interview.

White: Mr. Ryan, your new line of Jesus action figures is drawing a lot of attention. What can you tell me about them?

Ryan: We prefer to call them 'collectibles'.

White: Right, collectibles. Same question.

Ryan: Well, they’re made of plastic. Polyethylene mostly. They stand about six inches high, and they make a nice addition to any home.

White: Sorry, perhaps I wasn’t clear. Your products seem to have sparked a lot of controversy. Could you tell me why you think that is?

Ryan: You mean about the drugs?

White: I, um, what? No, I mean about cheapening the value of a sincere religious figure.

Ryan: Cheap? Well, they will retail for $14.95, I think.

White: How can I phrase this? Since you started producing the Jesus figures, you’ve had a lot of problems. People, they, they don’t like what you are doing.

Ryan: …

White: Question mark.

Ryan: Ah, I see what you mean. Yes, some people think that to preserve the Christianity “brand”, Jesus should remain in churches and on billboards, so they don’t really like him being turned into a six inch plastic figure. He comes with accessories though, people always forget that.

White: What do you think the benefits of selling these figures will be over keeping him in his traditional home?

Ryan: Well this way, you can take him with you everywhere. It used to be if you prayed out loud down at the Coney Island, people’d think you’re weird. But if you take your Jesus along, people will know exactly what you’re doing.

White: You, um, mentioned drugs earlier.

Ryan: No I didn’t.

White: Yes you did, right before you told me the price.

Ryan: How much?

White: What?

Ryan: How much do you want for the drugs?

White: I’m not trying to sell you drugs. You just said you had a problem with them!

Ryan: Lady, believe me, everyone who touches drugs has a problem. My advice, stay way the hell clear of ‘em.

White: Uh huh… ok, well perhaps you could just tell me what the Jesus figures do?

Ryan: All kinds of things. They’ll hear your prayers, watch over you on the road, perform miracles – small ones – and one of our younger customers has reported wielding Autobot Jesus in a great victory over Voldemort, the Sheriff of Nottingham, and a pair of velociraptors. They’re fully articulate too.

White: You mean articulated? Like their limbs move?

Ryan: No, I mean articulate. Jesus is a very good speaker, if you just open your heart to him.

White: You mentioned accessories earlier. What do they include?

Ryan: That depends on which version you get. Currently we have six different types: in addition to Autobot Jesus, we have Lawn Mowing Jesus, Hot Dog Vendor Jesus, Dr. Alan Grant Jesus, vanilla Jesus, and Cinderella Jesus, although the last one is basically just Barbie with a beard.

White: Is ‘vanilla’ Jesus just the plain, standard, sandals-and-robe Jesus, from the Bible?

Ryan: Excuse me, no, I meant Vanilla Ice Jesus. He comes with parachute pants, a boom box, and a lawsuit filed against him by the estate of Freddy Mercury and the other members of Queen.

White: Wow, he sounds like quite a toy!

Ryan: Sorry, ‘toy’?

White: Yeah, the Jesus action figures. It sounds like he’s going to make a great toy.

Ryan: They’re not ‘toys’. They’re Jesuses. You know, a personal Messiah, a Savior.

White: Right, but he’s just a figure, a representation of the real Jesus, who was your Messiah and Savior.

Ryan: These are real Jesuses. [knocks one on the table]

White: I know they’re real, but they’re not the real Jesus as a person, are they?

Ryan: Oh yeah! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. With one of these figures, you get your own personal Jesus. You no longer have to share with everyone else. He listens to you, and only you. Every whim – bam! – catered for. Like having a leprechaun, all to yourself!

White: Wait… seriously?

Ryan: Yeah, what did you think I was selling?

White: Wow... um, never mind. Where can I get one? Can I pay you? Right now?


Click to enlarge

[Rest of interview missing]

Mrs. White is no longer employed with Frodology, nor will she be saved by Frodo come the Frodocalypse.

In other news, look out for new Frodo action figures at your closest Toys R US!

Frodo behind 78% of world’s good

Frodology has conclusively surpassed Christianity in its claim to be the supreme moral arbiter of civilizations past and present. Christianity’s argument is based on its notion that without God, people are basically immoral fiends who bathe in the blood of unbaptized children and don’t reuse their plastic bags. Prominent atheists reject this claim, confoundingly purporting that people can be good of their own volition. Wait, didn’t we just read about people bathing in blood?


Fig. 1, Everything bad you've ever thought about an atheist is true

The problem with Christianity, however, is that it has never been able to quantify what proportion of the world’s benevolence is attributable to their God. While certain apologists will tell us that all of the goodness in the world is the direct result of Yahweh being a beneficent deity, this rings a little hollow. It is for one thing woefully unscientific. For instance, the Christian God makes no mention of dolphins, so preoccupied is He with the morality of man. On the contrary, dolphins are one of the few truly altruistic species on the planet. Why only last week they single handedly disabled and sank Paris Hilton’s private yacht, to the vast amusement of all.

Frodologist scientists, however, have conclusively proven that Frodo is behind at least 78% of the world’s good. Though the remaining 22% remains unaccounted for, Frodo’s lead is unassailable. Already, lesser deities are conceding to His greater moral authority and considering selling their minority stakes. Zeus is reportedly regretful that he expended so much energy on vengeance. “People look for different qualities in their overlords these days, but on the plus side, now I can focus on my music without having to worry about my worthless subjects.”

Christians are wondering where their God went wrong. After all, Yahweh was for so long a savvy deity, reinventing himself as the zeitgeist required. Like David Bowie, he jumped from being a jealous, embittered Jehovah in the Old Testament, to being a loving, forgiving daddy in the New. Somewhere in the subsequent 2,000 years, however, God clearly dropped the ball. The Archbishop of Canterbury admits that the writing was on the wall as far back as Jesus. “We should’ve recognized something was amiss when God could only show his face to the world through a totally different person. He probably couldn’t handle being genuinely nice. It was all smoke and mirrors.”


Fig. 2, Parenting comes easy to no one

Tired clichés aside, Christians are at odds as to when precisely God lost His dominance in the moral market. Some argue it was the First Crusade, in 1099. Others the Second Crusade. Still others believe it was the Third. A minority believe that God still had some moral authority in the early years of the 13th Century, and it was the slightly less early years of the same century that saw his undoing with the Fourth Crusade. Crusades Fifth through Ninth are not considered to have killed enough innocents to be seriously turpitudinous.

Lest this start to look like a guided tour of Christianity’s foibles through the annals, readers should remember that Frodology has a score to settle. So please, humor us while we examine a few more:

• The Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834, approx. 150,000 killed)
  
• Salem witch trials (1692-3, nineteen innocent witches hanged)
  
• Black Death (1340s, approx. 75 million killed because Christians weren’t praying hard enough)
  

Not all of Jesus’ flock are as quick to abandon their religion as the Archbishop however. In an interesting example of double standards, at least six Christians are demanding to see evidence of Frodology’s claim before ditching their faith, evidence being the one thing they did not require in order to start believing in the first place. When this contradiction was pointed out to the hypocritical half dozen, four withdrew their request, leaving a pair of Christians still unconvinced of Frodo’s moral superiority.

Luckily, Frodologist authorities have an ace up their sleeves. “Ordinarily considered a logical fallacy, the ‘appeal to popularity’ technique was frequently employed by majority Christians to get others to adopt their beliefs. It’s sort of like peer pressure. Now that Frodology is morally on top, we see no reason why they shouldn’t accept our fallacious reasoning.”

The Bible: a book review

Literary critics make a living out of cutting arrogant writers down to size. It seems only fitting that a tome whose author had the audacity to call it ‘the Book’ should eventually come under the microscope. How it escaped for two millennia without eliciting much in the way of derision is nigh on inconceivable. Perhaps minority religions go out of their way to avoid offending Christians in the hope that they will be spared the universal reach of God’s gnarled pointy finger. Does Frodology have such compunctions? No, it does not.


Lacking in character

Contrary to the misleading subheading, one of the biggest problems with the Bible is its overabundance of characters. In contrast to The Lord of the Rings, which has a tightly knit cast of a dozen or so main protagonists, the Bible is filled to the gunnels with Semites, Messiahs and whores. It has more characters than War & Peace, which has so many names to keep track of, I’ve never even read it.

And seven tribes of Israel is far too many. A quick scan of the literary canon reveals that great stories thrive on dialectics. Montagues v Capulets, Greeks v Persians, Confederacy v Union, Americans v Indians, Columbus v the convention of naming civilizations according to where they actually come from. Things aren’t much clearer in the New Testament either, with Romans, Jews, Gentiles, and Jedis all vying for control of the galaxy.


Fig. 1, Episode VII: Return of the Jesus

Suspending disbelief and sheer boredom at the same time

Since the fantasy genre only came into being centuries after the Bible was written, much of it reeks of implausibility. One character reaches the ripe old age of 950, which stretches the imagination a little. Unless it was set on Mercury, which has quite short years. Perhaps it was set on Mercury.

It wasn’t set on Mercury. And worse still is the all too frequent literal reliance on deus ex machina to get the story going again. When the hero of the New Testament meets his end too soon, the author makes the novice decision to resurrect him, putting the book on par with day time soap operas. And when Moses is leading his people out of Egypt, the author was stymied by his own poor geography, cornering the Jews against the Red Sea. “What now?” the author must have thought. “I can’t just have Moses part the Red Sea. Oh wait, no, I can just have him part the Red Sea!” Faced with such cheap tricks, I would have been happier with an aborted exodus.


Fig. 2, The Red Sea defies gravity while God defies talent

The New Testament also employs a narrative device whereby it retells the same story from four different perspectives, subtly changing details at times and outright contradicting itself at others. Its cleverness has perhaps been diminished by the recent box office mediocrity of the movie Vantage Point, which employed a similar device ad nauseam. Readers will therefore probably tire of the trick, as it has been executed more ably by authors such as, off the top of my head, J.R.R. Tolkien. The Dead Sea Scrolls suggest that the author already disposed of the worst of the offenders, but the tedium is such that editors of subsequent revisions would be advised to cut these ‘Gospels’ down to just two, or perhaps even one. Zero is also a good number.


Plotting and scheming

The plot itself is predictable, but this is as much to do with the protagonist’s tribulations being revealed as ‘prophecies’ much earlier in the book as it is to do with it just being a crappy story. One of the critical elements of the story feels so contrived one suspects the author of reverse engineering it. In the protagonist’s eyes, copulation is such a heinous sin that he later has to become a martyr in order to exculpate everyone for their own existence, begging the obvious question as to when and why progeny inherit the guilt of their own parents for sins which they weren’t alive to prevent. It would have been far more realistic for all concerned to celebrate rather than mourn his death. After all, nobody asked him to die for them. And this brings me to another point: whence the immorality of sex? The protagonist’s demonic obsession with the dirty deed is such that one smells a severe case of sexual repression. The character was clearly a closet homosexual. Why didn’t the author make more of this avenue?


Fig. 3, 32/M, loves cooking, Sex & the City, and spin class

All's well that shouldn't have been written in the first place

All in all, this novel is poorly written and stretches the imagination too far at times. It also comes across as too preachy. By contrast, Frodo’s message can be so subtle that many ignorami have been unaware until recently that Frodo is a prophet and a God, and worthy of worship as our Messiah. While the movie adaptation may be more accessible to modern audiences, its overt anti-Semitism is still a little off color. The crash of the Hindenburg is more surprising than Mel Gibson’s dislike of Jews. By way of advice to the Bible’s author as regards a sequel, I will say only this. Don’t presume you’re above editing, respect rather than resent your audience, and for Frodosake, get your head out of the clouds!

Virgins – just how hard is it for them to give birth?

Part II of the I Believe in Miracles series, or "I don't believe in this one"

Over the past few months, we haven't spent too much time trying to debunk other religions' creation myths and basic tenets because we want to be a positive, constructive influence in the world. Well, besides lambasting all other faiths for their comparative infancy, criticizing Catholicism for being so harmful to the environment, showing how Christians have the wrong end of the stick when it comes to homosexuality (heh), bashing the Vatican for its love of genocide and snobbish elitism, proving conclusively that Jesus has insufficient blood to feed his greedy followers, and arguing forcefully that creationism has got it all wrong when it comes to dinosaurs, it hasn't been too much time at all.

But today we're going to divert from our usual non-confrontational stance and address an issue which has recently come to our attention. Thanks to the crafty infiltration of a Frodologist spy into a service last Sunday, we have learned that Christians believe that Jesus was born of his virgin mother. That probably needs repeating. They think Jesus, a man, popped from the uterus of a woman who had never, ever been in a position to get so much as indecent, let alone pregnant.

Generally of the opinion that only pregnant women give birth to human babies, our trusty team of scientists set off on another mission to discover just how easy it is for a virgin to give birth. To that end, they followed around a group of purity ring-wearing teenagers for a week. Following a minute misunderstanding with the police and a hairy overnight stint in jail, their first discovery was that it's probably a good idea to ask someone's permission before following children around with binoculars and a camera. Undeterred, they felt triumphant when one of the chaste little teens did fall pregnant. If it really is so easy, what's so great about Jesus?

Disappointment then struck our heroic team when one scientist stumbled across the Wikipedia entry for purity rings and discovered that they are in fact just fashion accessories which could only be worn with less sincerity had they come from a cereal box. No immaculate conception, no miracle baby, and more to the point, no virgin.

The team then surmised that there were two possible conclusions. First, Mary was a virgin and thus there was no Jesus. While we're absolutely titillated by the track that train of thought could lead us down, we must admit the second possible outcome has equal merit. That is that Mary was more seasoned than the Gospels would have us believe. Perhaps she had an acquaintance in the Nazareth Postal Service. Maybe her name wasn't even Mary, but Mary the Harlot. Regardless, if Christians want to believe she gave birth, they have a hard truth to swallow.


Scientists suspect the culprit looked something like this... a 90s computer mouse

Immaculate conception, really? You know what would be more immaculate? Fertilization. Some Christians argue that it's a metaphor. That's right. A metaphor for a load of crap. Plus it sort of defeats the purpose of a metaphor when you proceed to take all of the conclusions that follow as literal fact. Obviously back when the Bible was scrabbled together from bits of irrelevant folkore and the inside cover of the Lonely Planet guide to Tel Aviv, sex education was somewhat lacking. Perhaps people thought virgin births were possible then. But since that time we've learned to wear sunscreen to prevent skin cancer and to run away from volcanoes when the island gods get angry. I feel like there's scope for improvement in the whole virgin birth department.

There is of course a third solution. Once again, it could have been a miracle.

But that's total bull: everyone knows only hobbits can immaculately conceive.

Jesus - out of blood by now?

Part I of the I Believe in Miracles series

Frodologist scientists inadvertently made great inroads into explaining the Christian faith today. Long puzzled by the sustainability of Christian hematophagy, the team first began by searching for hidden blood reserves. When this proved fruitless, they then followed up reports that the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro was actually a massive vessel of the vintage red stuff. At first discounting the theory as ridiculous, since the statue clearly wasn’t a ship, they then discovered a second meaning of the word, and set off for Brazil.

The team began to search for a giant tap, dubbed the ‘holy spigot’, which they hypothesized would be used to access the holy blood. When no tap could be found, however, the theory was abandoned for the much more logical conclusion that Jesus is permanently attached to a blood transfusion machine. Red Cross confidentiality being what it is, the scientists were at a loss as to how to begin the search.

It was then that the breakthrough occurred. The team went back to basics and began crunching numbers. They reasoned that the average human adult has approximately 5 L of blood in their system at a given time. Discovering then that each communion sip measures in at around 10 mL, they concluded that Jesus would be completely drained of blood within just 500 sips. Even with a robust immune system and healthy bone marrow, they found it would be impossible to replenish the requisite amount in the weekly ten minute orgiastic bloodletting that is a Catholic communion. Even with a small congregation, Jesus would struggle to feed it all before becoming a useless fleshy sack of bones. And that’s ignoring the thousands of years for which Catholics have practiced the art of vampirism.

Some Catholics argue that Jesus isn’t exsanguinated on a weekly basis because wine is simply transformed into blood before each communion. But that seems strange. Grape DNA hasn’t been irradiated into human DNA since that episode of The Simpsons that never got made because the plot was too absurd.

This track of reasoning has led the team of Frodologist scientists to an uncomfortable conclusion. Since Jesus’ seemingly inexhaustible supply of blood is inexplicable by science, it is clearly the result of a miracle. As an alternative to science, miracles of course benefit from enormous explanatory power. They can tie a premise to any conceivable conclusion without the tedium of scientific investigation, and best of all, are unassailable by critics. Anything seen as preposterous by science is much more easily swallowed when it becomes a miracle.

This inadvertent discovery thus bolstered Christianity’s hold on humanity. There are however two positive outcomes for Frodology in all this. First, through harnessing the efficacy of miracles, the team was able to reanimate the petrified corpse of Frodo’s pet ferret, Mungo, from orange peels and old newspapers. The scientists offered their thanks to Frodo that miracles are so egalitarian and non-discriminatory in their performances.

The second outcome is that, thanks to the abovementioned miracle, Catholics really are gorging themselves on blood every Sunday. The unavoidable conclusion is that, having supped from the blood of Christ, the original poster child for the resurrected undead, all Catholics have forsaken their bodies and souls to join Jesus’ burgeoning army of vampires. This makes them fair game for silver bullets and sharpened stakes wherever they’re found. In response to the study, Alan Greenspan recommended garlic to futures traders as a sound investment this quarter.