Bodies of Water is the most overtly religious band that will ever be featured on my blog, but they kick ass, so deal with it. I saw their show on Tuesday with Rebecca, who’s responsible for turning me on to their music in the first place, and while I already loved them from listening to their album, they’re the kind of band that you need to see live, because their whole thing, their entire appeal, comes from the fact that they, in their own words, “sing very emphatically, usually all at once”. You can respect that from a distance, but you need to see them in the flesh to really get it.
These are people who are just so fucking into what they’re doing that you cannot help but love them for it.
The ironic thing — apart from the fact of two atheists being so in love with an openly Christian band, I mean — is that I just finished the chapter of Hector Avalos’ The End of Biblical Studies destroying the apologetic justification that the Bible contains unique aesthetic and artistic value not present in lesser-known works of equal antiquity. I agree with him, completely, so how is it that a band which cribs lines from the Bible in many of their songs can produce something that actually does have a unique artistic value above and beyond the source?
Well, if I can put on my humanist hat for a moment, it’s all about what I just said: these people are really into what they do. Art takes its inspiration from wherever it can, and in this case it was the Bible. The actual creation of the inspired work of art came from not from the dusty tome itself but from a transmutation of those lines of ancient lore in the crucible of the minds of these talented musicians, applying their selves genuinely to the effort of expressing what they felt inside them.
Which is always awesome, in the original sense of inspiring awe.
With that all side, time to let them speak for themselves. Video first, then the lyrics, because as I said you really need to see and hear these guys to feel how genuine they are.
Some idiot about the legalisation of gay marriage in California:
I agree with the article above that says America is going to Hell in a hand basket. All we have to do is study how Rome fell, from within and America is going that way. … I think we have to get back to the Bible if we want God to bless this country again.
Last I checked, Rome didn’t fall until after Constantine made Christianity the state religion.
I haven’t written anything substantive in a while, so I hate to just toss down a link in lieu of my own thoughts, but I really thought that publius’ recent post on net neutrality over at Obsidian Wings was worth sharing. He does something interesting, which is reframe (in the proper, useful sense of the term — and no, I won’t stop provoking the reality-challenged “framing” idiots who think An Inconvenient Truth was a failure in science communication) the debate about net neutrality in terms of “openness”. He argues that when we say we want a neutral net, we really want one that’s open, in the same sense that the Eisenhower Interstate System is: any kind of traffic can use it, for any purpose, and everyone has access to it.
For instance, think about interstate highways. The reason that so many competitive markets exist on them (shipping, taxis, etc.) is because the government guarantees access to underlying roads (the “facilities”). No private party controls them — thus McDonalds can’t block Burger King trucks from using interstate highways. That’s sort of what net neutrality is all about — ensuring that this same openness exists for the next generation.
The crux of the argument is that government regulation is, counterintuitively, vitally important to maintaining the openness of the interstate system and likewise will be vitally important to keeping companies like Comcast from infringing on the openness of the internet as well.
The argument about regulation versus deregulation is therefore beside the point. What we should be asking is whether a given action advances openness. If deregulation promotes openness, we should pursue it. If, by contrast, regulation promotes openness, we should pursue that.
Valve has an awesome Team Fortress 2 blog where they’ve been posting concept art, news about upcoming changes to the game, insights about the game design process, and random bits of fun stuff from the community. This includes a series of proposed trading cards that focus on each class. Today, they uploaded the Pyro trading card set, which included a weapon trading card depicting the Flamethrower… When I saw it, I immediately knew what had to be done:
Indeed. I love that Magritte painting, entirely divorced from the original commentary. But, speaking of commentary, have this as a bonus.
Update: If the mismatched text colour really bugged you, Terras did a more accurate version. ;)
Seriously. Is it so hard to follow simple instructions like, “Please leave my package here.”? Apparently so.
I have never had this problem before. Every other time I’m expecting a package that I won’t be home to pick up, I sign the damned notice slip and they just leave it. Not this time, even though for the third attempt I left a PostIt just in case they didn’t read the comment I put on their notice form.
Seriously. This is not hard. Just put the fucking box down and walk away.
Update: Zappos, on the other hand, are awesome. After UPS ignored multiple requests to leave the package (the official line is that whether to leave a package or not is “up to the driver”), I emailed them to complain. They not only got UPS to redirect the package to my work address (which I hate to do but is clearly the only way I’m getting this bloody thing), but they gave me a $15 coupon for my troubles, even though it wasn’t their fault. Classy.
But just this once. And actually, I’m just going to quote somebody else. I was going to write up my own post comparing this whole business of Host Desecration to the binding spells used to create Sealed Evil In A Can, but instead I’ll just quote the Minnesota Independent from this interview with PZ:
MnIndy: I was raised Catholic, was an altar boy, and attended Catholic grade school and college. While I was taught to be reverent with Catholic symbols and artifacts, I also learned of a powerful god, totally unlike this fragile one that can be damaged by a non-believer’s mishandling of a communion wafer.
Too right. That reinforces a point PZ makes in the interview. People are getting uppity about these trivial things precisely because they’re frightened about actually substantive threats to their cherished delusions. People who are confident in their beliefs don’t fret about the damage done to their omnipotent deity by college students and biology professors. Certainly not enough to start sending around death threats.
It just seems to me that the ones who profess their faith most strongly are usually the same ones who are too impatient to let God’s will be done on His schedule, tripping over themselves to do it for Him.
Yes, my status as a blogospheric atheist is at last validated. I’ve finally got my first dumbass troll.
I’m already getting a bit tired of him, though. He’s a bit tedious, as most trolls are, so I wonder if somebody else doesn’t want to have a go instead.
He’s commenting on my Dinesh D’Souza post. Yes, the guy is defending Dinesh D’Souza. You can see why I’m getting tired of him.
Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon contributes to creeping me the Hell out with this quote from a book review by a weirdo fundie wife:
[My husband’s] purity is extremely important to me, so I try to meet his needs so that he goes out each day with his cup full.
Seriously, try to read that without going, “EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW!” in your head a few hundred times.
This is part of the whole weird fundie thing where they try to claim that “saving” yourself for marriage (which only applies to women, of course) makes sex way, way better. Of course, in reality, it just makes sex creepy and weird when you talking about keeping your husband’s cup full. Oh, God, I think I just threw up in my mouth a bit having to type that.
Seriously, is there anything these people can’t ruin?
