“Moreover, the satellites of Jupiter are invisible to the naked eye, and therefore can exercise no influence over the Earth, and therefore would be useless, and therefore do not exist.” — Astronomer Francesco Sizzi, on Galileo’s claim to have seen the moons of Jupiter
Religion
Jerusalem Syndrome
Between 1980 and 1993, 42 visitors to Israel experienced a peculiar psychotic episode with seven consistent clinical stages:
- Anxiety, agitation, nervousness and tension, plus other unspecified reactions.
- Declaration of the desire to split away from the group or the family and to tour Jerusalem alone.
- A need to be clean and pure: obsession with taking baths and showers; compulsive fingernail and toenail cutting.
- Preparation, often with the aid of hotel bed-linen, of a long, ankle-length, togalike gown, which was always white.
- The need to scream, shout, or sing out loud psalms, verses from the Bible, religious hymns, or spirituals.
- A procession or march to one of Jerusalem’s holy places.
- Delivery of a “sermon” in a holy place. The sermon was usually very confused and based on an unrealistic plea to humankind to adopt a more wholesome, moral, simple way of life.
These people had no history of psychiatric illness and arrived as regular tourists, with no special mission in mind. They recovered fairly spontaneously on leaving the country and were reluctant afterward to discuss the episode. No explanation has been found.
(Bar-el Y, et al. (2000) Jerusalem syndrome. British Journal of Psychiatry, 176, 86-90.)
Trivium
The shortest chapter in the Bible is Psalm 117. The longest is Psalm 119.
This knowledge can come in handy.
Divine Mystery
The sermons of London theologian Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872) were always received with rapt concentration. Alas, there was a reason:
- “I suppose I must have heard him, first and last, some thirty or forty times, and never carried away one clear idea, or even the impression that he had more than the faintest conception of what he himself meant.” — Sir M.E. Grant Duff
- “I do not remember that a word ever came from him betokening clear recognition or healthy free sympathy with anything.” — Thomas Carlyle
- “I am never in his company without being attacked with a sort of paroxysm of mental cramp.” — Carlyle’s wife, Jane
- “Well! All that I could make out was that today was yesterday, and this world the same as the next.” — Benjamin Jowett
- “Frederick Maurice has philosophical powers of the highest order, but he spoils them all by torturing everything into Thirty-nine Articles.” — John Stuart Mill
“Listening to him,” wrote Aubrey de Vere, “was like eating pea soup with a fork.”
Powerless
God can’t make a genuine $10 bill. Only the U.S. Mint can do that. Presumably God could make an atom-for-atom copy of one, but it wouldn’t be genuine because it wasn’t produced by the mint.
Therefore God is not omnipotent.
Above the Law
For an omnibenevolent being, God has a lot of legal trouble. Nebraska legislator Ernie Chambers sought an injunction against the deity in 2007, asserting that He had caused “widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.” And in 2008 a Romanian prisoner claimed that his baptism had been a contract that God had broken by failing to protect him from evil.
God escaped both suits on technicalities. Chambers’ action was dismissed because God has no address and thus couldn’t be notified, and the Romanian suit was deemed to be beyond the court’s jurisdiction because God is not an individual or a company. So that settles that.
“Can a Clergyman Marry Himself?”
This question was officially decided in the affirmative in the Court of Queen’s Bench, Dublin, on November 16th, 1855, in the Case of Beamish vs. Beamish, where the point came into direct issue.
— Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882
Beauty Sleep
Virginia Centurione Bracelli died in 1651, but her body was found largely uncorrupted when her grave was opened 150 years later.
She was canonized in 2003.
I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing
There’s a sculpture of Darth Vader on Washington’s National Cathedral.
During construction, a competition was held among children to suggest a carved grotesque, and Christopher Rader of Kearney, Neb., submitted a drawing of Darth Vader’s head.
It’s visible on the cathedral’s northwest tower — but you’ll need binoculars to see it.
Low Profile
Apparitions of the Virgin Mary, 2003-2007:
- Tree stump, Passaic, N.J., 2003
- Grilled cheese sandwich, Hollywood, Fla., 2004
- Expressway underpass, Chicago, 2005
- Pretzel, Nebraska, 2005
- Firewood, Janesville, Wis., 2006
- Chocolate drippings, Fountain Valley, Calif., 2006
- Souplantation restaurant, Grantville, Calif., 2006
- Pizza pan, Houston, 2007
- Watermelon, Arizona, 2007