Conservapedia is a popular fan-fiction site where aspiring writers painstakingly construct an alternate-history parallel universe based loosely around the storyline concocted within the series of fantasy works collectively referred to as “The Bible”. But as with many fantasy realms – especially those where numerous authors have created content, such as in the realms of Star Wars/Trek fandom – there are bound to be continuity errors and questions over what material should be considered parts of the “official canon”.

Well, the creative folks over an Conservapedia have decided on a rather unique way to resolve such disputes: they’re going to re-write the original fantasy novels to better support the later fiction they inspired!

Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. There are three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning:

* lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts introduced by Christ
* lack of precision in modern language
* translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one.

Of these three sources of errors, the last introduces the largest error, and the biggest component of that error is liberal bias. Large reductions in this error can be attained simply by retranslating the KJV into modern English.[1]

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:[2]

Personally I’m not a fan of the original work, but as an aficionado of fantasy literature and an aspiring writer myself, I’m intrigued enough by this project to consider making some contributions, or at least a few suggestions:

1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias

Well, of course a good fantasy realm has to be internally consistent to be believable, but it seems to me that if you’re going to address the underlying philosophical message of a piece of writing, your time would be better spent trying to massage away the plot holes that undermine that message. In this case, I’d consider starting with the “thou shalt not kill unless the voice in your head tells you to, in which case slaughter is totally justified” conundrum.

2 Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, “gender inclusive” language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity

This step needs to be taken a bit further: add more masculinity. What follows are some rough drafts of a few possible ways to handle this transition:

And the Lord commandeth Moses to draw forth his Glock 9mm semi-automatic, and Moses did; and he sayeth unto the Pharaoh, ‘Let my people go, bee-yotch!’ And the girly Pharaoh did run away whining to his mommy like a crybaby liberal, and the Not Really Christians But Close Enough for This Part of the Story did flee into the desert in their Hummers and American-built pickup trucks.

Parting the red sea by belching after a Coors Lite binge is another possible avenue to explore.

And Jesus said, ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, unless Caesar is a democrat or a negro; for those are lying socialist dictators.’ And Jesus did flex his manly biceps, and Mary Magdalene did drop to her knees where she belonged and render unto herself the bulge under his robe, which would have been a sin were Jesus not a family-values Republican.

Wow, this is even more fun than I thought it would be!

3 Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[3]

Don’t dumb it down, dumb it UP! The Stupid in the Bible is one of the most interesting things about it. Never be afraid to add more Stupid!

4 Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle”.

5 Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as “gamble” rather than “cast lots”;[5] using modern political terms, such as “register” rather than “enroll” for the census

Search and replace becomes your best friend here!

6 Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.

For consistency, also accept the logic of Limbo and explain its recent disappearance. Also Narnia and the alien base on Mars where abductees are anal-probed.

7 Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

Thou shalt not steal unless thou canst afford to hire flunkies to do it for thee. The peddling of worthless investments to uninformed consumers shall also raise thee in stature in the eyes of God.

8 Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story

References to feeding the poor and healing the sick contribute to the socialist agenda, so those must also go.

Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels

It goes without saying that examples of open-mindedness which leads to conclusions other than our pre-conceived ones will be correctly excluded.

10 Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”

Clearly excessive use of “words” can be dangerous when mixed with the wrong sort of open-mindedness (see above), leading potentially to the sins of Curiosity, Investigation, or even the deadly sin of Questioning. Wherever possible, extensive wordiness should be replaced by buzzwords and simplistic catch-phrases which invite repetition rather than discussion.

How long would this project take? There are about 8000 verses in the New Testament. At a careful rate of translating about four verses an hour, it would take one person 2000 hours, or about one year working full time on the project.

Well then get to work, I can’t wait to read the results! This won’t outsell the original, but it’s sure to be a big hit!

Frank Schaeffer, whose recent article I talked about in my last post, showed up on Rachel Maddow’s show with this to say:

For those (and you know who you are!) who might opine that atheists should just shut up, or who might bring up the old canard that goes something like, “If you don’t believe in God, why are you so afraid of him?”, I offer, in reply, this article by Frank Schaeffer:

As a former Religious Right leader, who was raised (and home-schooled by my Evangelical-leader parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer) in the movement, let me explain just why the ordinary rules of decency don’t apply to the right these days.

He goes on to talk about the home schooling and private Christian schooling movements that took off in the 50s:

In the early 1970s the evangelicals like my late father and James Dobson decided that the our society had fallen so far “away from God” and so far from “America’s Christian history” that it was time to metaphorically decamp to not just another country but to another planet:. In other words virtually unnoticed by the media and mainstream political operatives, a big chunk of American society seceded from the union in all but name.
[...]
Hating the USA became next to godliness.

He quotes evangelical leaders to reveal a theocratic agenda – non-Christians shouldn’t be allowed to vote in this supposed “covenanted Christian nation”, and “The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God’s law.”

Whether the world wants it or not, one would assume, and even if said goal has to be achieved at gunpoint.

The fact of the matter is we now know what the experiment in raising children outside of the American mainstream means. It means that there’s a whole subculture within American culture that mistrusts facts precisely because they are facts. They glory an alternative view of not just politics but of reality.

Those damned facts must be tools of Satan, because they’re always rearing their ugly heads to contradict our faith.

Most chilling is Schaeffer’s insistence that this movement, though it has suffered a tremendous loss of political power in the last few years, is still going strong and working tirelessly to incrementally, gradually influence every aspect of our society.

There’s no arguing with such people and no winning against them using mere elections. They are not playing by American rules. Their idea of winning is not fair elections but Armageddon.

Got that? When we hell-bound militant godless heathen speak up about why we’re hell-bound militant godless heathen, it’s these people – and often their more moderate enablers – we’re railing against.

… it might be due at least in part to the need to cover the rising incidence of teen pregnancy and STDs under the auspices of the Bush/Republican/right-wing/holier-than-thou “abstinence only” sex education programs.

Yes, it seems that in 2005, just about the time when effects of the Bush-era policies of enforced ignorance might start to be seen, there was a sharp reversal of a long downward trend in the very kinds of teen issues that sex ed classes are supposed to help prevent:

According to the CDC, birth rates among teenagers aged 15 or older had been in decline since 1991 but are up sharply in more than half of American states since 2005. The study also revealed that the number of teenage females with syphilis has risen by nearly half after a significant decrease while a two-decade fall in the gonorrhea infection rate is being reversed. The number of Aids cases in adolescent boys has nearly doubled.

The report becomes more interesting when we take a look at where in the country the biggest upswings in these statistics have happened:

The CDC says that southern states, where there is often the greatest emphasis on abstinence and religion, tend to have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs.

Now of course correlation is not proof of causation. Just because teens seem more likely to have unprotected nookie in communities where “sex before marriage makes the baby Jesus cry” is deemed a superior alternative to… oh, let’s call it… “reality” – doesn’t mean they’re boinking in large numbers simply because they’re uninformed. But those who might tout the effectiveness or righteousness or whatever of the ignorance-only plan need to give us some evidence that it actually works, and based on this study, that’s clearly not the case.

“Oh”, one might argue, if one was an evangelical nutcase, “the problem is that our abstinence-only efforts aren’t widespread enough to counter the effects of our sinful society!” And, in fact, that’s exactly the argument being made against these statistics:

Kristi Hamrick, a spokeswoman for American Values, which describes itself as a supporter of traditional marriage and “against liberal education and cultural forces”, said the abstinence message is overwhelmed by a culture obsessed with sex.

If there was some truth to this statement, wouldn’t we expect to see significantly higher pregnancy and STD numbers outside Sarah Palin’s “real America”? You know, all those cities packed with them thar commie-lovin’ godless islamo-fascist America-hatin’ inneleck’shul libruls, those places where Christianity is illegal and gay sex is mandated by law and the president isn’t really a Kenyan spy bent on dictatorship?

Aren’t those the folks God is supposed to be punishing with AIDS?

One wingnut far-right radio personality/blogger has suggested that Sarah Palin may plan to form an independent conservative political party to “take this nation back from the liberals which now control both parties” (no, I’m not making that up), and the article has been linked to by Palin’s Facebook page and the web site of her political action committee.

If true, this is the first action Palin has taken on the public stage of which I wholeheartedly approve. Go for it, Sarah! The best thing you could possibly do for this country is to split off the batshit insane portion of the Republican party from the (considerably smaller) straitjacket-optional faction and let the BIP and the GOP bludgeon each other into political oblivion to give the rest of us more time to try to elect leaders with both brains and spines (a rare combination).

Right way to express disapproval of a culture, tradtion, religion, etc:
Orally or in writing in an appropriate venue, inviting discussion and criticism, and using the interplay as means to refine or revise your argument.

Wrong way:
Murder practitioners of the offending creed. Human beings can sink to some very low depths in the name of glorified tribalism, and the deliberate murder of a pregnant woman and her husband simply because you don’t like the implications of her clothing is a few fathoms down on that scale. (Not so bad as, for instance, killing and/or displacing millions through a misguided invasion of an entire country, just to pick a theoretical example, but a horrible crime nonetheless.)

Muslims are justified in their outrage, in this case, both over the crime itself and the tepid media response to it. They are correct in saying that had a Muslim attacked a member of some other ethnic or religious group, news tickers on every TV news network would have reported the killing over and over at the bottom of the screen during the 24 hour Michael Jackson coverage.

Based on recent history, though, it should be pointed out to the more radical among the Muslim community: justifiable outrage is not an excuse to riot in the streets. Do that and you’re just lending credence to the lunatic fringe that might be inclined to support this man’s actions. Do that and you continue to perpetuate a justifiable-outrage circle-jerk that will keep on begetting violence and distrust on both sides long after you’ve gone off to meet your version of the invisible sky wizard. (Besides, it’s not as if the guy drew a picture of Mohammed or something…)

I should also point out that this man’s vile actions and the seeming lack of western interest in said actions are in no way a repudiation or validation of your repressive, misogynistic traditions. Your head scarves and burqas are the symptoms of a belief system in which women are little more than property, subject to beatings and execution if they, willingly or not, step outside the narrow, puritanical set of behaviors you have defined for them.

Ensign and Sanford are the latest in the GOP (your) Family (not mine) Values crowd to be embroiled in sex scandals. (Who will be next? These things always happen in threes, you know!) These latest are particularly interesting – in Ensign’s case, because it appears he may have used his position to arrange for financial reward and punishment for his mistress, and in Sanford’s case, because he apparently spontaneously abdicated his duties in pursuit of his South American love interest.

Maybe Sanford is smarter than we think – he left the country to have his affair, so he probably can’t be charged under South Carolina’s archaic anti-adultery law. However, that alleged higher law he brought up during his speech reserves a harsher punishment for him than the fine and/or prison time prescribed by state legislation:

The man who commits adultery with another man’s wife, even he who commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. (Leviticus 10:20)

Governor, are you sure it’s a good idea to be bringing up “God’s Law” right now, in a state that’s part of the literalist-leaning Bible Belt?

It seems that just last night I was speculating on what the Bush folks would be up to in the waning days of their disastrous administration.

Someone at the New York Times had a similar thought, apparently, because the paper’s Opinion section ran an article on Monday titled “So Little Time, So Much Damage“. It seems there are still plenty of civil rights to be taken away, environmental regulations to repeal, and reproductive rights to challenge before the game is over.

There’s even time to squeeze a few more unqualified candidates into politically appointed positions! Pretend for a moment that you’re Michael Alix, a high-level executive in charge of risk management at Bear-Stearns. Your company has been run into the ground, presumably by taking risks it shouldn’t have – which means you haven’t done your job very well. It’s a good thing you’ve got a sweetheart golden-parachute deal worked out, because with “helped bankrupt a large financial house” on your resume, your short-term job prospects aren’t too rosy.

Not in BushWorld! No, here in the land of manufactured reality, you’ve earned yourself an important position at the Federal Reserve! In related news, Michael Jackson has been hired to conduct children’s tours through the White House, and Army intelligence operatives have mounted Sarah Palin on a tall pole on the Alaskan coast to serve as an early warning system should the floating head of Vladimir Putin darken the western sky.

As of this writing, Obama’s carrying 333 electoral votes to McCain’s 156; even Fox news has declared him the next president. The totals aren’t all in yet, of course, and those numbers are based in part on exit polls, but even should the GOP decide to challenge many of the results, Obama has won an electoral landslide that’s likely going to hold in spite of whatever efforts the right may make to try to invalidate it.

Democrats will now have solid majorities in both houses of congress; under other circumstances, I would call this a bad thing – too much power in the hands of one faction can become a dangerous thing. In this case, though, I’ll have to make an exception, because taking the power out of the hands of the crazy people has to override those more generic fears.

My new worry is that the Bush admin will use the fact that nobody cares about them anymore to launch a scorched earth policy to make the incumbent’s job as difficult as possible. At any other time in my life, had someone suggested this as a legitimate worry, I’d have laughed; but I with BushCo in its last throes, I can’t help but think it could happen.

Yes, it’s a historic victory in a historic election, for numerous reasons that will have been covered in a thousand other places. So I’ll just close by offering congratulations to Obama and Biden, and good luck to them in facing the massive challenged that await them after January 20th.

(Oh, and Nevada was just called for Obama, making the count 338-156.)

Well, God’s money, that is.

It seems that a bunch of ministers have decided risk losing their tax exempt status by endorsing a political candidate in a move they’ve dubbed Pulpit Freedom Sunday. Apparently the idea of church-state separation has been completely lost on these people (not that I’m shocked in the slightest).

Someone will have to challenge this action, of course, or political endorsements by religious organizations will become commonplace – as if they weren’t already, though now only in slightly-less-subtle-than-a-blow-to-the head, “unofficial” ways – and the challengers will of course be painted as evil god-hating pagan atheist devil-worshiping liberals who are waging a war on Christmas and want to outlaw Christianity, but hey, we alleged servants of Satan get that all the time anyway.

The thought of churches losing their tax exempt status over this is a pleasant one, though. Let ‘em endorse all they want, but they’ve got to pay taxes. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if many of our financial problems couldn’t be solved by simply dropping those religious tax exemptions altogether. The down side would be of course that many of the charitable services provided by churches – soup kitchens, shelters, etc – might suffer, but there’s certainly no reason that such services couldn’t be moved to secular non-profit organizations that would retain their tax breaks.

I wanted to look into this matter a bit more, but recent, comprehensive statistics on church income seem to be sparse. I did find a report claiming that evangelicals in the US collected approximately 2.66 trillion dollars of income in 2000. That’s a figure that has probably risen since then, and leaves out, one would assume, the Catholic church, thousands of non-evangelical Christians, and organizations of the Jewish and Muslim faiths, as well as all the other groups out there who collect donations in support of mythological figures.

Taxing this income could pay for the entire Iraq war in only a few years, so our children and grandchildren (and so on) don’t have to. It would provide a vast new source of wealth for improving infrastructure, addressing health care costs, improving education, etc – in short, it could be put to much better use in improving the quality of life for all Americans than it currently does. Of course, a few preachers might have to sell their Jaguars.

I’m aware that barring some awesome breakthrough in anti-aging science, there won’t be an America within my lifetime with the political will to even try this. I suppose I could hope that, instead, these organizations could back up their tremendous electoral influence through the pushing of issues and platforms and all-but-open candidate endorsements by actually ponying up some cash to help pay for the actions our elected officials take in their names… but that, of course, would be asking for a bit too much of that personal responsibility stuff that the right-wingers always want everybody else to take.