So That Happened…

WAR ON CHRISTMAS
This year’s plans goals and methods 11/1-12/31

Meeting called by
Grandmaster Wormwood, George Soros, Our Illuminati Masters
Attendees: Classified

10/31 – Oversaturation
Beginning the Christmas season as early as possible will make the general public tired of the season. Remember there are only about 12 Christmas songs, three of which are any good and one of those we’ve fermented a debate that it’s about drugging a woman’s drink. By the time December hits those songs, most of which aren’t even religious, won’t even register as having any meaning anymore.
Location: Everywhere

11/9 Propaganda
Seek removal of any religious indications of the ‘season.’ Remember the majority of Christians are insecure enough that if we they don’t see a constant reminder of their religion, they become enraged and are quickly thrown into doubt over the veracity of their belief. Even though the coffee cups, for instance, have symbols of the holiday on them (i.e. trees and wreaths) without a silhouette of their god on it they swiftly become atheists. Location: Retail and Coffee Shops

11/22 Consumerism
Operatives will continue to push forward the financial benefits of ignoring the holiday for the purchasing of consumer goods. This further separates the alleged meaning of the holiday toward one where the public foolishly spends too much money that they don’t have for things they don’t need in an attempt to further exhaust the kind of enthusiasm they might have. Location: Everywhere

11/22-12/26 Speech Control
We should direct our agents in the corporate world to instruct all employees to continue to use “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” As per the consumerism directive, without a audible reminder of the exact holiday being honored (and it’s pretty obvious which one) the religious forget what they are doing and are thrown into doubt. The important thing to remember is that a minimum wage temporary employee of a clothing/electronics store literally controls how much and what they believe based on which two words they mutter exhaustively in their twelve hour shift. Everywhere

Additional Instructions:

Though tempting refrain from mentioning that Christmas trees are literally forbidden by Jeremiah 10:1-6 in their own book. It’s imperative to remember that most of them haven’t read their book and only remember bits and parts of it.

Also, refrain from pointing out that their book also never mentions how many kings/wise men visited Baby Jesus and that the number three comes from the Quran. We don’t want to tarnish one of the few good songs we have to listen to for the next two months.

Again, it’s probably no use to point out that the massacre of the innocents by Herod the Great (which, seriously would he have been called “the Great” if he did this), never happened as it would have been chronicled by Roman historians, the very least of which, Josephus. Especially since Josephus was one of the sources used as late as the Renaissance to prove the historicity of Jesus…which we know was a forgery.

On the same subject it’s not really good to argue that the “Messiah” prophecy from Isaiah 7:14 refers to a young woman becoming pregnant and not a virgin, one thing is normal the other not; since the adherents of the book will often revert to discussions of things being “mistranslated” and then doubting Jewish scholars who apparently don’t know their own language as well as some Liberty University professor.

On specifically the same subject, the savior of the Jewish people is not some guy named Jesus but rather the Cyrus the Great of Persia (modern day Iran) who saved the Jews from Babylon. The early Isaiah writer yearns for the savior to come, the later author describes the savior as imminent given the conquests of the great King of Kings he thought Cyrus would utterly destroy Babylon. This didn’t happen but the temple was rebuilt and the Babylonian captivity ended…though they were under Persian control but enjoyed much greater freedom than they had before. It’s too historical for them to understand or appreciate.

Finally, it might actually be worth it to ask this question: why does the Bible stress the genealogy of Joseph (with the contradiction being Matthew has 28 generations while Luke has 43 betwixt David and Joseph) being a descendant of David, as per the prophecy, when Joseph isn’t related to Jesus at all if we are to believe the virgin birth?

So the above was a fun little handout that I wrote for the skeptical drinking society that I head every month. Obviously it is satire, and faithful readers of this blog will note that I basically recycled some of my annual “dispatches from the war on Christmas” blog entries. Nevertheless during our meeting a woman came to the backroom of the bar, where the meeting was being held, and asked who wrote it.

Before the meeting I had shown the bartender and a few of the partrons the flyer. They thought it was funny and a good bit of satire for a meeting of skeptics and atheists. I, thinking the same was about to follow, volunteered that I had written it.

What followed was a good couple minutes of me staring at this woman in disbelief as she berated me for what, I assumed, was her belief that we ought not to be encouraging the consumerism because there’s too much of it already. Repeatedly, I attempted to explain that it was satire about people who really believe there is a war on Christmas. This however, did not work, and she continued until someone else in the meeting realized that I was unprepared for the woman being serious, and then not immediately backing down when I explained what it really was and took over the conversation.

I guess this means that there is nothing too extreme that can’t be taken seriously by people who apparently want it to be.

 

On a different note: I’m probably suspending updates for the next few weeks. My dissertation topical defense is coming up and I should focus my writing on that. So, if you check for regular updates and don’t see anything–fear not, I’ll be back after December 18th.

Ark Encounter Revisit

From time to time it’s fun to find out how Ken Ham’s giant boat in the middle of Kentucky is doing. Usually I like to hit this up on slow days when I have trouble figuring out what to write about, but it’s always fun because Ham is slowly descending into the world of extremism. It’s like knowing a train crash is going to happen, there’s nothing you can do to stop it and it’ll at least be exciting for a moment before any of the consequences are realized. This brief search of the news did not disappoint.

Brief recap: Ham’s Ark Encounter has been a public shit show for years. Conceived during 2010, Ham’s for-profit company pitched the idea and received various tax incentives in the town and county where the giant boat is currently located. No surprise there, after all this is in Kentucky, a state known for both its bourbon distilleries and the dry counties where that bourbon is produced. Atheists protested the move saying it was a violation of church and state for local governments to give tax incentives to what basically amounts to a ministry. Further compounding this problem is that in order to work at this sad excuse for a theme park you have to sign a document pledging to the tenets of Ham’s crazy religion including that the Genesis story is literally true, even the mental gymnastics necessary to resolve the contradictions, that homosexuality is bad, and a whole host of other beliefs that would be rendered unconstitutional if the pledge included oaths denying the legitimacy of the Christian religion. But because this was barely Trump’s America on January 25th 2016, a federal court ordered Kentucky to ignore the blatantly discriminatory hiring practices  and award the tax incentives.

Ham’s group made a lot of promises to the various governments, and like the Bible’s poor retelling of an earlier better story, the whole thing is a wash. Every month seems to have worse numbers than the previous, and each year is severely underperforming form the year before. Ham’s impact study and attendance estimates (which were conducted by their own people and not a third party) claimed that 1.4-2.5M people would visit the park annually. However the actual number is a little over half of that at 860K tickets. Now, that’s still way more people than I’m comfortable with going to see a life size replica of a fairy tale story run by a guy that believes all of geology is a conspiracy against Christians, and that some dinosaurs were fire breathing as well as living alongside humans.

We know these numbers because open access requests petitioned for the receipts of the fifty cent safety fee tacked on to the 48$ adult ticket price that Ham fought in court and lost. That number comes up with a total of 862,471 paid ticket sales. Spokespeople from the Ark Encounter have been claiming that they actually are making the 1.4M if you count children under 4, which are free, and the lifetime members who don’t pay ticket prices when they come in. This really raises the question (it doesn’t beg it, that’s a whole different thing): why would anyone want to be a lifetime member? Aside from the sheer lunacy of the park, can’t one just take a picture of a diorama and call it a day? If we assume that explanation is right, it means that nearly 20% of the Ark Encounter’s yearly attendance figures would have to be children under 4 and lifetime members.

Though Ken Ham himself, who-if you haven’t seen him looks like an Amish hobo, went a slightly different way, claiming that the attendance is way up and it’s only that Atheists are using the media to spread slander about media bias to smear the phenomenal success of the Ark Encounter. The media is just making things up in order to discredit this place and its attendance numbers.

Look, we don’t have to make up figures to make fun of the place–its very existence makes fun of itself. Also let’s not play projection here Kenny, making up shit to prove a point is what you do and that’s what your entire boat is for. If you really want to prove that the Ark is real why not build in the water with period accurate tools using gopher wood? We know why, because you really don’t want to risk being wrong. It’s why religions prohibit you from asking the deity to curse/kill someone, not because it will work but because it won’t.

Ken Ham believes that he’s a victim of a secular media plot to spread fake news about his organization. He’s so close to blaming it on George Soros that I wouldn’t bet against him doing it in the next few months. He’s pretty much gone full Trump at this point with the only difference being that Ham isn’t in charge of anything other than a massive fraudulent ministry and a theme park with no rides. The next fictitious story they plan on building is a replica of the tower of Babel, because if they are going to build monuments why not build them based on stories ripped off from earlier better civilizations like the Sumerians.

Ham’s a nutter, and he’s only going to get worse as it goes on. Even the pics he releases from his own park show attractions that are failing to attract. Even granting the position that it’s mostly children under 4 that are attending the park, they aren’t buying tickets, they aren’t buying anything and thus aren’t contributing to the economy in the manner of 1.4M paying guests that he promised would. A judge from Kentucky put it best that the tax play was not a good deal. Well that’s kind of an understatement, then again Ham is the kind of guy that believes the value of Pi to be 3.