Something/Someone Old

Look what they found in Mexico City, underneath a hotel:

It's a five-hundred-year-old Aztec temple to Ehecatl, the wind god. There's a large temple, a ball court, and lots of human neck bones.

It apparently was in use from around 1481 to 1512, though researchers say that after the Spanish conquest, it was unlikely it was used for its original purpose.

Here's some coverage from Al-Jazeera:

Something New

Looks like vegetarians may be able to eat burgers that taste like real burgers soon:

People figured out a way to make a veggie burger taste like real meat. The key is apparently a chemical compound called heme, a primary component of hemoglobin. It contains iron and turns red when it comes into contact with oxygen, which is why red meat is red. It's also what gives meat its flavor. You don't have to get it out of meat, though; apparently nitrogen-fixing plants also contain it. (Good old nitrogen-fixing plants. So helpful in so many respects.)

Apparently these things behave in all respects like an ordinary burger, though they are made primarily out of heme, potato protein, coconut oil, and wheat (so people with wheat problems still won't be able to eat it, but probably everyone else will). Everyone else who can afford it will be able to eat it, anyway. It apparently costs about 20 dollars to produce an impossible burger right now. So San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, brace yourselves for the impossible burger! They say they will get the price lower when they're able to scale up the production.

I just can't help wondering how it will be able to produce grease when it has no animal fat. The coconut oil, I guess.

Something Borrowed

OK, I was shocked at the Google results when I looked up today's Borrowed thing (yes, I know I should switch to DuckDuckGo; I'm just trying to figure out if I have to use it with Chrome). There is apparently a backlash against the idea that Christianity borrowed elements from paganism, even though they obviously did:

I'm not usually crappy to Christians, despite the fact that back in the day they basically eliminated the pagan religions of Europe, by force when necessary, and created a sort of cultural wipeout of religions deeply related to the earth, which I have a problem with not only because I am a pagan, but because I think it has led to some deeply unfortunate things, the consequences of which we are living with now (though, arguably, Christianity's tolerance of capitalism has had far worse consequences, and has no basis in their holy texts that I can find. I mean, absolutely none. Jesus might be either noncommittal or obscure with regard to paying taxes, but he is not noncommittal at all about the corrupting influence of private greed and wealth. He talks about the problems with money about ten times for every time he talks about the problems of sex.) Then there's how they treated their own dissidents and freethinkers. Um. Inquisition not good. I wish I could say the Protestants were better, but they burned Catholics. What is up with all this burning people?

That said, I don't reduce a religion to its worst components and then say "See! It's BAD!" I don't generally like doing that except with the most egregious examples of human behavior and thought. Like capitalism, fascism, Nazism, and staring at smart phones while at table.

You see, once upon a time I was a Christian, in a rather wonderful Episcopalian community that possibly saved my life, and certainly gave me kindness and stability during a very difficult time. Also, I actually loved a great deal of Christianity. It was an amicable break-up on my side, occasioned by the fact that I realized I just couldn't believe that everybody who didn't accept Jesus as Lord was going to hell. In fact, I kind of had a problem with the idea of a beneficent God creating a Hell in the first place. Eternally burning in torment? Who the hell (heh) came up with that idea? It reminds me of Bill Clinton having fantasies, after the 2008 crash, of working people murdering Lloyd Blankfein in an ally ("Don't give them anything. Even if they knifed Lloyd Blankfein in an alley, it wouldn't sate the bloodlust." For God's sake, man, leave me out of your sick fantasy life.)

So I don't have a fundamental problem with Christianity. In fact, if I had found Universalism before I left Christianity, I probably wouldn't have left.

But I find it troubling that when I Google "Christianity borrowing from other religions," what I get is a mighty backlash of attempted proofs that Christianity didn't borrow from pagan religions. Not the pagan religions around them that predated them (those of the Romans and the Greeks) and not the pagan religions in the lands they culturally colonized. This despite the fact that Christianity has a holy child born on the winter solstice. (They did not get this from the Bible. In the Bible, Jesus obviously wasn't born on the winter solstice. Sheep aren't pregnant in December, at least not in the Northern Hemisphere). They celebrate this event by bringing evergreen fir trees inside and decorating them, along with festooning the premises with holly and ivy:

The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full grown
Of all the trees that are in the wood
The holly bears the crown
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir

The rising of the sun? The running of the deer?

Nothing pagan here, obviously.

Clearly Jesus' birth was attended by the running of the deer. His birth had a lot to do with sunrise, running deer, and royal trees ("of all the trees that are in the forest/the holly bears the crown.")

Look, I'm not saying PAGAN GOOD CHRISTIAN BAD, urgh, urgh, welcome to Gorilla Theology 101. I'm just saying we should be honest. It's honest to say some pagan religions were pretty horrible and run by bastards (see my Something Old. The Aztecs were bastards. It doesn't excuse the other bastards who murdered them and obliterated their society, but the Aztecs had dealt out similar treatment to people who followed different religions than theirs.) It's honest to say Christianity has, in many times and places, behaved abominably, in ways that departed from the teachings of its holiest figure.

And it's honest to say Christianity borrowed elements from pagan religions. In fact, it's bloody obvious. They did it for political reasons, to advance their cultural domination first of the Middle East, and later of Europe, and it worked like gangbusters:

It's very tough for us North Americans to imagine Mary and Joseph trudging to Bethlehem in anything but, as Christina Rosetti memorably described it, "the bleak mid-winter," surrounded by "snow on snow on snow." To us, Christmas and December are inseparable. But for the first three centuries of Christianity, Christmas wasn't in December—or on the calendar anywhere.

December 25 already hosted two other related festivals: natalis solis invicti (the Roman "birth of the unconquered sun"), and the birthday of Mithras, the Iranian "Sun of Righteousness" whose worship was popular with Roman soldiers. The winter solstice, another celebration of the sun, fell just a few days earlier. Seeing that pagans were already exalting deities with some parallels to the true deity, church leaders decided to commandeer the date and introduce a new festival.

That's from Christianity Today. http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/2008/august/why-december-25.html

I wish every Christian who admits to this cultural borrowing was as matter-of-fact as Christianity Today. But unfortunately, some people, beginning actually with the Puritans, decided to purge the taint of paganism from Christianity instead:

In the early 17th century in England, the Christmas season was not so different from what it is today: churches and other buildings were decorated with holly and ivy, gifts were exchanged and charity was distributed among the poor.

A holiday of generosity in midwinter. Sounds terrible.

Also much as it is today, it was a period of carousing and merriment. The weeks around Christmas were celebrated with feasting, drinking, singing and games. Mummers would blacken their faces and dress up in costumes, often in the clothes of the opposite sex, to perform plays in the streets or in homes. Carolers, too, would sing door to door as well as in the home. Wealthy lords threw open their manors, inviting local peasants and villagers inside to gorge on food and drink. Groups of young men called wassailers would march in and demand to be feasted or given gifts of money in exchange for their good wishes and songs.

Again, how horrible. Fun is terrible. And look at the temporary suspension of classism! Shocking.

My favorite part of that song is where they tell the butler he'd better bring them out the good beer.

Puritans detested these sorts of activities, grumbling that Christmas was observed with more revelry than piety. Worse, they contended that there was no Scriptural warrant for the celebration of Jesus’ birth. Puritans argued (not incorrectly) that Christmas represented nothing more than a thin Christian veneer slapped on a pagan celebration. Believing in the holiday was superstitious at best, heretical at worst.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/opinion/the-puritan-war-on-christmas.html

I believe this is called being a spoilsport bullying son-of-a-bitch.

And among the Christians who admit to this borrowing, some of them are on this particular kick. That's why there's been a decline in the celebration of Halloween, though of course the stories of poisoning children with candy and putting razors in apples help. (It is not clear whether these stories are true or urban legends. Snopes says they are true, but an academic specializing in this urban legend has gone through nearly thirty years of newspaper accounts and has not verified one instance of a stranger trying to randomly hurt children by putting sharp or poisonous substances into candy.) What was once a great festival honoring death and the dead in a way that is not grim, yet at the same time does not ignore the fact of death or its fearful aspects, a holiday where strangers interacted with each other in a trusting way (like wassailing, a primary component of the holiday is knocking on people's doors and demanding food), our only holiday other than April Fool's Day which celebrates the trickster (I suppose that will be on the chopping block next) is now often celebrated by taking children to a party at the mall.

To borrow a phrase, Oy vey.

It would be so much simpler if Christianity would just admit that it borrowed those cultural elements to popularize its religion, that the strategy succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, and that, if some Christians want to return to the forms of Christian practice that pre-date this strategic syncretism, they should just do so, and stop spewing all over other people's fun.

To quote the rabbits, "Are you going to put those crosses in our warrens? We live under this hill, all right?"

Something Blue

Let's take a moment to salute the blue whale, according to the World Wildlife Fund, the "largest animal ever to have existed" (I assume they mean in the post-dinosaur age.) They are magnificent creatures, and, though I've never seen one, it's been an honor to share the planet with them.

This is a very cool fact about them, perhaps even more remarkable than their size:

Blue whales mostly travel alone or in groups of 2-3. Larger groups of up to 60 whales have been reported and are probably associated with feeding grounds.

However, the blue whale has the most powerful voice in the animal kingdom and its low-frequency sounds can travel in deep water over hundreds, or even thousands, of miles. Under these circumstances, animals which may appear to us to be traveling alone may actually be in constant contact with one another.

http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/cetaceans/about/blue_...

My personal salute to the blue whale:

By the way, trigger warning: some asshole took the blue whale's name and put it onto some kind of screwed-up suicide game. So if you search, you will likely be taken into those murky waters.