Sunday, January 22, 2006

Excuse me?

I recently heard a couple of idiotic comments of late, and thought I'd share them with you, oh faithful few.

First, there has been more than a little bashing of the religious zealots who decry anything scientific as anti-God, but I can now give equal bash to idiots on the other side. In November the Dali Lama endorsed research being conducted into the actual effects of meditation at Harvard and Princeton universities. He said, "Without investigation, you cannot see reality." Pretty cool, I think. I like the Dali Lama. Actually I like most of what I have heard from both Buddhism and Hinduism, since both pretty much seem to leave others alone should they not care to follow that particular path. But, just as some religious extremists wouldn't accept water from a scientist if they had just crawled out of the desert, some scientists are disdaining the Dali Lama for daring to even talk about science. At the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, in Washington, DC, he made the above comment, but there were actually people petitioning to cancel his talk, and six presenter removed their posters. That is so incredibly stupid. Here we have a man of faith who is saying that there is room in the universe for both science and religion, and the scientists decry him for it. I am constantly shocked by the number of closed minds in the scientific community. Ah well.

And today, while at the grocery store, I heard the most bizarre comment. A young man, probably an athlete judging by his size and dress, was in the next aisle talking very loudly on his cell phone. The store was quite crowed, and I had my 8 year-old with me, so his frequent use of expletives at such a high volume spoke very highly of this fellow's upbringing, but I digress. What caught my attention was that he seemed quite incredulous about something he had just been told, to which he replied, and I quote, "Oh my fucking gosh!" Gosh? GOSH?! He has no problem dropping the F-bomb on half a store, but sweats taking the Lord's name in vain?
Call me old fashioned, but if you are peppering your speech with enough profanities to make Dick Nixon blush, the odd god thrown in here and there really isn't going to make matters worse.

But then again, that's how things would be if I were Gosh.

Marius

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"that's how things would be if I were Gosh" hahahahha. i love that, man.

Anonymous said...

That young man needs to come to his senses and embrace Pastafarianism.


May all be touched by his Noodely Appendage..
Ramen

Ld. T

Anonymous said...

I actually read the article you are referring to about the Dalai Lama and science... I thought it was so very cool. It is in scientists and religious folks best interests to get along with each other rather than hating each other -- we're all just exploring the unknown in our different ways. Scientists are just as bad, totally scoffing anything metaphysical, mysterious, or what they have classified as non-scientific. I won't bang on the scientists too hard though because religious fanatics can get right into the downright scary, judgemental, paradoxical, insensical, and as you illustrated, hypocritical. I am afraid of the religious right. They leave no place for wonder but what they've defined is proper from a secular poetic book translated multiple times and taken as law.

If only we could all work together for a common good. Being balanced oriented, I tend to think of God as "Good Orderly Direction". That means whatever is good orderly direction for each individual.

Gosh darn it.

Anonymous said...

gosh diggity dog....