Wednesday, January 28, 2009

3 Shevaṭ 5769: Rattle Snake Round-Up Day/National Kazoo Day

Greetings.

Worthy causes of the day: “Repower, Refuel, and Rebuild America” and “Urge Interior Secretary Salazar to Rescue the Polar Bear”.

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions:
  1. “Religious freedom at center of pot case”:  The religion in question is the Religion of Jesus Church, which claims they are religiously required to smoke marijuana.  It is claimed on their Web-site that hemp in mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as an aromatic herb, on which justification they believe they are supposed to smoke it.  This is frankly a very pathetic sort of hermeneutics because hemp is not mentioned at all in the Hebrew Bible.  I am not clear what the plant they claim is hemp, qaneh-bosem, really is, but hemp is hardly likely.  The name does mean something like “reed of perfume”, but as any picture of cannabis will tell you, cannabis is not a reed.  Furthermore, even if qaneh-bosem were cannabis, it is still a great leap of interpretation to claim that just because a plant is used as part of sacrificial incense that it should be generally used for smoking.
  2. Self-promotion: 2009 Darwin Week in Charleston | February 08-15. Come and tell me everything I am saying is totally bogus—if you can.
Today’s news and commentary:Today’s weird thing, submitted by Barry, is “Polite Fiction”. Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

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