What a friggin' waste of my time! It's now 6:22 pm local time and still no Rapture. It was supposed to start at 6:00 pm and I was all ready for it. I had my camera with a basic theodolite setup, and pointing directly towards a local church. Being in a typical American city, there are churches every few blocks, of course, so I was ready to slew the camera towards at least one more church as well.

So I hear that someone somewhere is saying the rapture will happen tomorrow. Of course, for my Jewish and Muslim readers this is no big deal, since everyone knows that only Christians are eligible for rapture. Actually, as my co-blogger Ken pointed out to me the other day, only the really good Christians will be raptured. The rest have to stay here to slug it out with the antichrist like everyone else.

As for readers of this blog, I expect to see all of you still here come Sunday morning.

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus' resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

The culminating event of this weekend uprising was their leader Jesus himself rising from his grave to lead his army into the city of Jerusalem in an effort to rebuild their ancient temple which had previously been destroyed. The followers of the Great Zombie Jesus refer to him as the "Messiah" which is an ancient Hebrew word for "Great Warrior" and "King of Kings". He was believed to be a direct descendant of a previous warrior, credited with leading great bloody battle campaigns, called David.

Then the sixth angel sounded: And I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, "Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates." So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind. Now the number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them. And thus I saw the horses in the vision: those who sat on them had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow; and the heads of the horses were like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and brimstone.

"I saw for the first time the earth's shape. I could easily see the shores of continents, islands, great rivers, folds of the terrain, large bodies of water. The horizon is dark blue, smoothly turning to black. . . the feelings which filled me I can express with one word--joy."

"I looked and looked but I didn't see God."

"Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country."

Let me get this out of the way in the first paragraph: Terry Jones of Qur'an burning fame is a bigoted fool. He's a bigoted fool not because he burned his copy of the Qur'an, but because he hates people simply because they don't worship the same God he does in a similar enough way. What a tool!

The number of people (and legislators) over-reacting to this incident, however seems to have reached an intensity I haven't seen before. I'm hoping it will die down without any further stupid actions, but, baring another nuclear meltdown somewhere soon, I'm concerned it will not.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here about free speech, so I'll skip the lessons about the Heckler's Veto and importance of protecting unpopular speech beyond simply reaffirming that popular speech rarely needs protection in a democracy.

One element in this story that seems to have been neglected in the rush to ban such speech is that the original demonstrations over the Qur'an in Afghanistan were small and peaceful; similar to the kinds of protests I see in Chicago over immigration policies. The trigger that seems to have set off the violence and killings is President Hamid Karzai deciding to use the Qur'an burning in a speech of his as a political tool. It seems he wanted to show how much he cares about some of the fundamentalists in his country.

The reaction to that was, apparently, the Taliban deciding to cash in politically as well, and they joined one of the peaceful marches, broke off from the main group, and committed pre-meditated murderous acts. Their motive was, almost certainly, a political reaction to Karzai's stumping.

The incident in Afghanistan seems to have been far more about politics than religion.

Now we cut to the reaction in America. Senator Reid would like to start Congressional hearings to look into ways he can protect people in other nations by banning speech in America. Senator Graham would like to invoke wartime powers (in our Forever War) to directly ban speech which could "inspire the enemy". When can I expect politicians to start accusing each other of being soft on book burnings?

The reaction in America seems to be far more about politics than religion.

Let's pretend, however, that this really is all about religion and free expression. There seem to be a few different arguments out in the community about why this type of speech should be banned. They all seem flawed. The problem is that I'm not a Constitutional scholar, and may have some very wrong ideas about free speech, so I'll go over some of the common arguments I've been seeing and present my understanding of them even though I may be wrong. If anyone knows better, please enlighten me in the comments.

The most common argument I see is that America "restricts" speech anyway all the time, so we don't really have free speech, so why are you complaining about just one more restriction in the name of saving lives? The basic problem with this argument is that there is a difference between restricting speech and banning speech. As far as I can tell (not being a Constitutional Scholar) is that America only outright bans one type of speech, regardless of time or place. You cannot directly incite violence. Period.

Some commentators have latched onto this idea and simply accuse Jones of incitement and proceed to call for banning of such speech on the same grounds. I consider this to be a most insidious and worrisome argument. If Congress were to ban speech by broadening the definition of incitement, we could run head first into the problems of the Heckler's Veto, but I fear it would be used simply to ban speech the majority considers unpopular. I truly fear the majority in a democracy, for they can be more difficult to overthrow than a dictator.

Beyond incitement, though, I can't think of any other speech that is outright banned in America. There is a variety of restrictions, but not a banning of speech beyond incitement. I suppose libel would be the speech with the most restrictions that is not outright banned. Even so, as I understand it, there are situations where libel is allowed, or perhaps isn't legally called libel in America. I know it's nearly impossible to stop someone from knowingly lying about a public figure, such as a celebrity or politician. I wonder if this blog is enough for me to be considered a "public figure". I imagine there are legal debates going on right now about how that definition is changing in the new media.

Another form of speech that seems to be cited as heavily restricted is when conspiring to commit a crime. In this case it is not the speech that is illegal but the conspiracy. From what I have read, the speech is the evidence used to prove conspiracy. The situation and intent is all important here as Rod Blagojevich has been trying to prove. If you say the words in jest, they are not evidence of a conspiracy.

That leaves the various "time and place" restrictions. The thought experiment generally cited is the classic "yelling 'Fire!' in a crowded theater". The speech "Fire!" is not banned in America. The time and place of that speech makes creating the ensuing dangerous panic illegal.*

The other time and place restrictions such as getting your bullhorn out at 3:00 am in front of a hospital are, just like the "yelling fire" example, not banning speech, but placing reasonable restrictions on speech. The same speech is allowed in most places at most times. Saying you want to restrict burning holy books just like America restricts people from yelling "fire" is not at all the same. You can yell "Fire!" outside of the theater, or even inside when the theater is not crowded. Banning book burnings is not a time and place restriction.

In conclusion, let me reiterate a point I've made before. It's just a friggin' book! It's paper, ink and some binding material. The words and ideas within cannot be destroyed by burning a copy of a book. I once suggested the correct reaction to such situations was to burn the holy books of as many religions as possible all at once to demonstrate this fact as well as show that it's not just about religious penis envy.

I now realize, however, that's so 20th century. We should instead organize a mass deletion of holy e-books. I want to not just delete them, however, since I know that all of the words will still exist. We need to destroy those magnetic bits so they can't be reconstructed. On PC's it will be easy to download software to overwrite that Bible with random electronic signals, utterly destroying that copy forever. In other e-book devices you may need to erase that Qur'an then upload new, larger books in its place, then delete that and repeat enough times to make the original words vanish into digital oblivion.

Buddhavacana, Norse eddas, the Four Books of Confucianism, the Book of Enoch, the Tabula Cortonensis and many, many more. Let's get digital copies and erase them en masse! Mash those Holy Ones and Zeros together with such a fury that even the NSA couldn't put them back in any semblance of order. Grab your old book reader loaded with all these texts and turn on that giant electro magnet you built years ago but never had a use for! Listen to that glorious buzz as the memory chips are hopelessly cleansed of Bronze Age rituals and misogynistic rules!

What the world needs now is a Holy E-Book Demolition Party! Can you still book Comiskey Park?

---

*By the way, I think it's time for the scholars to update that thought experiment. Yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater today would, most likely, just result in a head full of popcorn and getting yelled at to sit down and shut up. The fire codes are so good (not saying they couldn't be improved at all) that most people would no longer be panicked by such a statement barring secondary indications of a conflagration such as smoke and a fire alarm going off. Perhaps we can use "Yelling 'Muslim!' in a crowded Tea Party Convention".

For almost a decade we have had heavy-handed rights abuses all in the name of keeping people safe from threats which kill far fewer people than traffic accidents do each year. We allow the files on your laptop to be perused with no cause. We take for granted that people can be detained indefinitely without being tried or even accused of a crime. The United States now condones tortuous acts, which we ourselves once prosecuted others for, as normal. We think it's OK to listen in on private conversations of anyone without any judicial review at all. The American public accepts all this, and more, in the name of safety.

Today, October 23, is a good day to celebrate the birth of the universe. The question is just how many candles do we need for the cake?

The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by Roger Scruton, an English philosopher, titled "Memo to Hawking: There's Still Room for God". (Sorry, it's behind a paywall.) He attempts to refute Hawking's premise that no God is needed to create a universe from nothing.

Immanuel Kant, who believed that Newton's laws of gravity are not merely true but necessarily true, argued that we humans lack the ability to comprehend the universe as a whole, and thus that we can never construct a valid argument for a designer. Our thinking can take us from one point to another along the chain of events. But it cannot take us to a point outside the chain, from which we can pose the question of an original cause.

If Mr. Hawking is right, the answer to the question "What created the universe?" is "The laws of physics." But what created the laws of physics? How is it that these strange and powerful laws, and these laws alone, apply to the world?

The laws of physics are not physical objects that need to be created. They are a set of explanations for how the universe works. Perhaps Scruton is confused by the word "law". The common usage for the word is that laws are man-made rules. (I'm sure the lawyers reading this have a much more precise definition...) Physicists use the word as a way of describing limitations they place on how the universe can work. In effect, the physicists are the "creators" of the laws, but only insomuch as they were the ones to write them down after figuring them out.

Breaking news:

New computer simulations have shown how a glass slipper, as described in Grimm's Cinderella, could have been created using a unique combination of quartz-rich silicates found only in northern Germany. When heated to just the right temperature, as was available in primitive furnaces of 14th century middle Europe, the model demonstrated that glass could have annealed by chemicals from nearby dung fires forming a unique matrix. Early cobblers could have used this glass to construct a slipper durable enough to be worn by a young stepdaughter destined to become a princess.

The actual headline I read was Computers show how wind could have parted Red Sea. The first line of the article reads "New computer simulations have shown how the parting of the Red Sea, as described in the Bible, could have been a phenomenon caused by strong winds." It's a summary of an actual scientific article from the journal Plos One. Normally I just ignore crap like this, but it's shown up in the top ten most read articles on the BBC for more than 24 hours now, and Plos One is an up-and-coming journal that has some level of respect in the science community.

I was reading yet another story about the good old fashioned book burning organized, then cancelled, by Pastor Terry Jones. President Hamid Karzai was quoted as saying:

"We have heard that in the US, a pastor has decided to insult Korans. Now although we have heard that they are not doing this, we tell them they should not even think of it.

"By burning the Koran, they cannot harm it. The Koran is in the hearts and minds of one-and-a-half billion people. Insulting the Koran is an insult to nations."

It sounds like he has read Fahrenheit 451 and even managed to understand the premise that burning a book cannot destroy the ideas within the pages. Yet he still considers the act an insult to the book. Protesters around the world burn American flags (which doesn't matter since that act cannot harm the ideals of the US Constitution) angry that the US government didn't take away the liberties of the Koran burners.

These eight days ain't about candles performing beyond their published specs.

I know there are people who are comforted by the sentiments expressed in this video, and I apologize to them, but it creeps me out, and I'm angered by the audacity of it.

A few weeks ago, Stuart Shepard from Focus on the Family created this now-slightly-famous video in which he suggested that Christians should pray for rain during Barack Obama's acceptance speech:

Well, Obama gave his speech, and it didn't rain.

The problem with such a public and specific prayer request is that if nothing happens, Shepard's got some awkward explaining to do. I mean, doesn't one of the following five statements have to be true?

1. God doesn't exist.
2. God can't make it rain.
3. God doesn't respond to prayer.
4. God likes Obama more than he likes Focus on the Family.
5. God thinks Stuart Shepard is a jerk.

(Hat tip: Kip)

Check out this awesome video of Ann Coulter explaining how things would be better in this country if everyone was Christian.

I'm especially impressed with how she explains the advantages of being a Christian to her Jewish host:

Well, it's a lot easier, it's kind of a fast track. You have to obey...You have to obey, we have the fast track program...ours is more like Federal Express.

Yeah, that's the take home lesson of Christianity: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not not have to obey all those tiresome rules like the Jews.

(Hat tip: Kip)

Members of the religious right sometimes complain that Christians like themselves are losing their religious freedom. In my experience, those complaining loudest are all too often deploring the loss of "rights" such as the right to have government-paid teachers force children to recite prayers, or the right to force everyone else in the country to use the same definition of marriage that they do.

Here's what the real thing looks like, and not from one of those crazy Muslim countries, but from the United Kingdom:

A teenager has lost her High Court challenge to be allowed to wear a Christian "purity ring" to school.

Lydia Playfoot, 16, claimed the ban imposed by the Millais School in Horsham, West Sussex, was an "unlawful interference" with her right to express her faith.

But lawyers for the school successfully argued that the purity ring was not an essential part of the Christian religion and contravened the school's uniform policy.

Who cares if the purity ring is "not an essential part of the Christian religion"? All that matters is that the purity ring is an essential part of Lydia Playfoot's religion. We don't have freedom of religion for the benefit of religion. We have freedom of religion for the benefit of religious people.

(Hat tip: Kip)

So, I hear that Jerry Falwell died.

I was in high school and my early college years during the heyday of the Moral Majority, a bunch of busybodies who seemed terribly worried that people were enjoying themselves in ways they did not approve. In particular, they seemed to dislike recreational sex, and they seemed to dislike popular culture—television, movies, and music—that promoted recreational sex.

(By the way, that link isn't to the Moral Majority I knew, which was disbanded in 1989, but to the Moral Majority Coalition, which is a modern re-creation of the original. The website doesn't even mention that Falwell is dead, so I'm not sure how active it is.)

Naturally, I thought Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority were a bunch of crazy people trying to impose their dreary opinions about morality on the rest of us. I know the Moral Majority stood for other causes important to evangelical Christians, and I know Falwell has done many other things, but the Moral Majority's war on popular culture was all I ever needed to know about him.

I disagreed with his ideas, and I despised his urge to censorship. My youthful philosophical objections to Falwell's moral crusade eventually lead me down the path to social liberalism and then to the broad anti-coercive freedom of libertarianism. Opposition to Falwell's kind of cultural oppression helped make me the libertarian I am today.

However, I never really understood Falwell and his followers. I never understood why the things they wanted were so important to them. Neither, I think, did most other Americans. For most of the last 20 years Falwell's followers have been losing the culture war, becoming less and less relevant as a result.

When he died it came as a shock to me how many people apparently still took him seriously, believed in the values he advocated, and now mourn his passing. Although I disagreed with his views, I'm not one of those people who's glad he's dead. I don't mourn his passing, either.

Jerry Falwell's death is not relevant to me because his views and values are not relevant to me. I'm glad my world turned out that way.

Happy Easter everyone.

A bunch of bloggers have chosen this weekend to host a Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm, with everyone posting articles opposing the mixing of church and government.

I'm against theocracy, but I just didn't have the energy to come up with anything to say about it. (Besides, scheduling it on the weekend of Christianity's most important holiday seemed a little rude. It makes it seem like people are being anti-Christian rather than anti-theocracy.)

So, while I have nothing, you might want to surf over to the Blog Against Theocracy website and read what they have to say. Kip Esquire has posted some classic Carl Sagan bits from Cosmos here, here, and here.

Something calling itself the Restored Church of God has an amusing-yet-scary-yet-still-amusing explanation of why blogs are Satan's work. Rogier van Bakel has the details.

When Fox News journalists Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig were kidnapped and held by Islamic extremists, they managed to get away by pretending to convert to Islam. I think it's pretty cool that they pulled it off.

As Lindsay Beyerstein points out, not everyone agrees with that assessment. In particular, David Warren of Real Clear Politics is being a bit of a dick about it:

The degree to which our starch is awash is exhibited in the behaviour of so many of our captives, but especially in these two. They were told to convert to Islam under implicit threat (blindfolded and hand-tied, they could not judge what threat), and agreed to make the propaganda broadcasts to guarantee their own safety. That much we can understand, as conventional cowardice. (Understand; not forgive.)

Well yes, of course they must be cowards, I'm sure most reporters in a war zone are cowards, right?

It just gets weirder:

But it is obvious from their later statements that they never thought twice; that they could see nothing wrong in serving the enemy, so long as it meant they'd be safe.

I assume they are not Christians (few journalists are), but had they ever been instructed in that faith, they might have grasped that conversion to Islam means denial of Christ, and that is something many millions of Christians (few of them intellectuals) have refused to do, even at the cost of excruciating deaths. Christianity still lives, because of such martyrs. Not suicide bombers: but truly defenceless martyrs.

That's right. Shame on those two guys for not martyring themselves for Mr. Warren's religion. What were they thinking? How could they let David down like that?

David Warren is obviously a devout Christian, and I can see how he finds it abhorrent to convert to another religion. I'm sure that if he had been there (instead of dealing with no-doubt more pressing business in Toronto) he would have not only accepted death, he would have insisted on crucifixion.

But if he's right that these journalists aren't very religious, then to expect the same from them is ludicrous. They probably see the whole Christian v.s. Muslim thing as kind of like the Tooth Fairy v.s. the Great Pumpkin. And when a whack-job with a blanket and an AK-47 wants you to swear allegiance to the Great Pumpkin, you swear allegiance to the Pumpkin and get on with your life.

These two journalists used guile and deception to get out of a dangerous situation and return to their families, whereas David Warren thinks they should have given up and died. Which of these approaches seems more like the American way to you?

I never heard of David Warren before this, but he now strikes me as a pundit in the same mold as Cal Thomas, who sees the cruelty and barbarism of our enemies and thinks, "We should be more like that."

I don't know enough early Christian history to guess whether Warren is right about the contributions of the martyrs to the survival of the church. But here's something I'm pretty sure of: Christianity is a strong and vibrant religion today because its 2 billion adherents have helped create a world in which martyrs are no longer necessary.

Muslims, Jews, and Christians in Jerusalem have found common ground at last:

Even as the ties between Palestinian and Israeli politicians strained against the current crises in Gaza, religious officials from the Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities united Tuesday to oppose a gay pride parade in Jerusalem.

More than 50 prominent religious figures visited the Knesset's Interior Committee to urge MKs to stop the World Pride event, scheduled to take place in Jerusalem next month. Several right-wing religious MKs brought the coalition to the Knesset, asserting that "never before has the Holy Land seen such a union of religious leaders."

Of course, this being the middle east, everybody talks tough:

"I promise there's going to be bloodshed - not just on that day, but for months afterward," declared New York Rabbi Yehuda Levin, a representative of the Rabbinical Alliance of America.

...

"If gays will dare approach the Temple Mount during the parade, they will do so over our dead bodies," said MK Ibrahim Sarsur (United Arab List- Ta'al).

The Christians are keeping their response a bit cooler:

Last week, Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar wrote to Pope Benedict XVI asking for the church to issue an official condemnation. While the pope has not commented on the event, an ambassador from the Vatican told the committee that "as a representative of the Holy See to Israel, I believe... holding this event would contradict the sacred nature of Jerusalem."

And then there's this bit of wisdom, worthy of one of our own fine legislators:

MK Ibrahim Sarsur (United Arab List) told the committee that "these types of problems" don't exist in Muslim society. "Every man has the right to do what he pleases, but not if it offends others," he said.

I'm offended by that.

But there's a silver lining. Mideast peace at last:

MK Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism promised that if organizers of the World Pride parade agreed to hold the march elsewhere, he would utilize the new coalition of Jewish, Muslim and Christian officials to promote peace and brotherhood in Israel.

Sometimes I think the people of the Mideast deserve each other.

(Hat tip: Hit & Run)

Yesterday we went to see the new X-Men movie. The movie was pretty good, but the really amazing part was that we got the closest possible parking space to the theater. The only closer space was handicapped parking.

After the movie we went to dinner and this time we got the parking space right in front of the restaurant door.

Normally when I get good parking, I quip that the parking space gods have smiled on me. Hey if the Romans had a god of boundaries and border markers—Terminus—why can't there be a god of parking?

But then it hit me: Maybe finding good parking spaces is my mutant power! Now all I need is a mutant name. Parking Man is too campy, it sounds like a DC character, not Marvel. How about Spaceman? Still campy, but with a touch of irony.

Later, on the way home, I wondered if Roman Catholics have a saint for finding good parking spaces. They seem to have one for everything else. There must be a saint for migrants, looking for a place to settle. How hard would it be to adapt him or her for finding parking spaces?

Update: I looked it up. Of course there's a saint for finding good parking places. That would be Mother Cabrini, also the patron saint for immigrants.

This is not quite what I was hoping for in Afghanistan:

Abdul Rahman, 41, has been charged with rejecting Islam, a crime under this country's Islamic laws. His trial started last week and he confessed to becoming a Christian 16 years ago. If convicted, he could be executed.

I have nothing against Islam, but what I've seen of Islamic law seems intolerant and dangerous.

It seems that a lot of people in the Middle East need to grow up.

In Beirut, a day after violent protests in neighboring Syria, the thousands-strong crowd broke through a cordon of troops and police that had encircled the embassy. Security forces fired tear gas and loosed their weapons into the air to stop the onslaught.

The protesters, armed with stones and sticks, seized fire engines, overturned police vehicles and garbage containers for use as barricades, damaged cars and threw stones at a Maronite Catholic church in the wealthy Ashrafieh area—a Christian neighborhood where the Danish Embassy is located.

Flames and smoke billowed from the 10-story building, which also houses the Austrian Embassy and the residence of Slovakia's consul.

Protesters waved green and black Islamic flags from the broken windows of the building and tossed papers and filing cabinets outside.

Witnesses said one protester, apparently overcome by smoke, jumped from a window of the embassy and was rushed unconscious to hospital. Security officials said he died.

If you haven't been paying attention, these rampaging protests are over a series of offensive cartoons in a Danish newspaper. Most of them are just confusing to me, but I can see how some of them would be offensive. Actually, I'm more than willing to take Muslim protestors' word for it that the cartoons are offensive. I think, however, that if you believe you must respond violently to offensive cartoons, there's something wrong with you. You're acting like a child.

In contrast, consider the ruckus raise in the United States by the release of The Last Temptation of Christ. Many Christians in the United States were upset by that movie and by what they saw as a perversion of Christian doctrine. They wrote letters, complained to the media, and held protests outside of theaters showing the movie. Defenders of the movie, or of the right to show it, wrote letters, complained, and staged counter-protests against those protesting the movie. The police, in keeping with the tradition of separation of church and state, didn't take sides, and acted to protect the safety of protesters on both sides. There was a lot of argument, and a lot of noise, but not a lot of violence.

It wasn't always that way, of course. Christianity has a long history of violence against other religions and against schisms within Christianity itself. But Christians learned lessons from the violence and terror, and the violent and tyrannical elements of Christianity have been reigned in.

Islam seems to be going through similar changes. There are 6 million Muslims in the United States, and they behave—at least as much as any other American—like civilized people. So do millions of other Muslims around the world.

That's because they understand the rules of religious tolerance in a liberal civilization: Everybody has the freedom to follow the religion of their choice, to encourage others to do so, to express their objections to other people's religions, and to object to the objections of others. Nobody has the authority to force anybody else to obey the rules of any religion.

It's not always that way, but that's how it should be. Everywhere.

So-Called Austin Mayor has this to say about Pope Benedict's condemnation of same-sex unions:

And no offense, but if I was the "Holy Father" in charge of an organization that demands celibacy from my employees, I would hesitate before charging someone else with threatening the future of the family.

Heh. Read the whole thing.

I was raised as a Lutheran, not a Roman Catholic, but just because us Lutherans didn't see the Pope as our leader doesn't mean we ignored events in the Catholic church. I remember when Pope John Paul died after only about a month and the cardinals elected a new one who took the name John Paul II. This was huge news here in Chicago because, get this, he was Polish. (Chicago probably has more polish people than Warsaw.)

To my teenage eyes he looked pretty old, so I expected him to die pretty soon too. But he didn't, not even when he got shot. He just kept getting older. I'd catch a video of him and he'd be a little more stooped over than I remembered and walking a little bit slower. And I'd think any day now... Then I'd forget about it until the next time I noticed he'd aged some more. Any day now...

It feels like I've been watching Pope John Paul II dying all my life. At some point, I probably stopped thinking about it. But now that it's finally happened...it's a little surprising.

Is it? Could it be? Oh my God, it is! It's Lutheran-Themed Humor! The last time I saw this was when Woody on Cheers was getting married!

Hey, that consubstantiation stuff is pretty important, but dead elvis has a point: I spent 13 years in the Lutheran school system, learning about Lutheran history and doctrine, and sometimes it was all about kicking the Catholic church's ass.

Later, I noticed that Lutheranism is one of the most marginalized religions in America. Every time the news media talks about Christianity, it's always about them Pope-lovin' Roman Catholics. If they mention other types of Christians it's usually the born-again folks or just "Protestents," as if there weren't many different kinds of Protestants--and there are many, many different kinds. (I'd like to give a big Lutheran Shout-Out to my homies in the Missouri Synod, especially the fine people of the English District. Righteous!)

From the Cheers episode:

Woody: "Ask her why she thinks the Book of Concord is not in line with the Scriptures!"

Kelly: "Because it's not."

Woody: "HERETIC!"

Trust me. Lutheranism doesn't get much funnier than that.