Friday, December 28, 2007

Genesis 19: Total Insanity

As a "Merry belated Christmas" present, here is some hilarious Bible bending brought to you by superdeluxe.com:
(And as with many things Hebrew Bible related, it is probably not suitable for children)

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Bible bending climatologist

Forget the science behind this graph (the creators obviously have) and check out the Bible bending points of reference:


I know this is fuzzy (the original is not much clearer) but notice that right between "scattered volcanic eruptions" and "sudden cool down" we have the "Hebrew Exodus from Egypt" at around 1200 B.C. and, at a time of global temperature equilibrium, Jesus was born. Then things really started to heat up.

Readers of the Bible bending blog know that the Bible can crop up anywhere at anytime. Often its use is defended as a culturally efficient way to focus mass attention on moral imperatives (say, feeding the hungry and clothing the naked). Aside from negating the complexity of the Bible and reaffirming the Bible's usefulness for all parties (those who feel that men lying with men is an abomination, for example), such a defense attempts to ignore the impact of the Bible's take on history and its vision of the future. The Bible creates an entire world view that makes sense of past and present events in a way that only rarely agrees with historical analysis, archaeological evidence, and the current political environment.

Cliff Harris, co-creator of the above graph, is a self-taught climatologist who according to an article in The Spokesman Review (February 26, 2007) believes the Bible is loaded with clues on predicting the weather.

Harris told the newspaper, "I do believe in a period of extreme global warming. That will be in the tribulation period. That's when the real global warming will come in. Those of us who are believers, we're looking forward to it."

The "tribulation period" (for those dozen or so of us who have not read the Left Behind series) is the time referred to in Mathew 24:21 and Revelation when sinners will meet divine judgment. So according to Harris, global warming is coming, it is our fault, and there is nothing we can (or should) do about it.

Harris is not just a man who needs to invest in some better graph software, he is the go-to climatologist for global warming skeptics. So take this Bible bending climate graph to heart: the Bible is not just a quirky cultural reference, it is leading us down the road to dusty death.